Firefighters use vacant house as training site for 2 years
VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) - An unoccupied home belonging to Bethel Church will be torn down next month, ending its two-year period of training region firefighters to save lives.
The church has not only allowed free access to the Valparaiso Fire Department but has also shouldered the costs of removing the asbestos and the final debris.
"They have allowed us to use it for nearly two years and in December it will be torn down. So while past training has focused on being non-destructive we now can do some of the more destructive training in the home," Division Chief John Kroll said.
Kroll said it's always challenging to find homes to train and developers often need to clear the way and do not have the ability let the home sit for such a long time.
"It certainly was needed as no fire departments in the area have a dedicated training facility designed for fire training," he said. "Fire departments must rely on finding and modifying either the building to support the training or training that fits the building."
Kroll said the greatest thing about this has been the ability to train with so many firefighters from other departments and develop and enhance partnerships with them.
In the past week, live fire and search and rescue training has included fire departments from Union Township, Washington Township, Portage, Whiting, East Chicago and Lakes of the Four Seasons.
"It's a great opportunity for us to work with our neighboring departments to provide a pretty limited resource to as many as possible," Kroll said.
The VFD has had access to the house since April of 2014. Last year environmental inspections were completed and this year they used the house to refine their hose stretch procedures and then conducted several department-wide drills "so we can more efficiently get the first hose line into place."
"We have been working since September to prepare the house for live fire training which will involve lighting bedroom and living room fires and extinguishing them," Kroll said.
Kroll said the training will benefit each department involved because of the opportunity to train together to identify equipment compatibility issues and differences in tactics and procedures.
"There is a considerable amount of preparation required to allow the house to have repeated fires inside it," Kroll said. "Since the work is being done we may as well share it with our neighbors so everyone gets to benefit from the resource before it goes away permanently."
Portage firefighter Kevin DeYoung was leading search and rescue drills on Friday with recruits from the fire academy.
"By bringing in all the different recruits we're able to train them together and that way if we do go out on a mutual aid call we'll be able to work better properly," he said. "And we're trying to get a standardized training for this area."
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Source: The (Munster) Times, http://bit.ly/1YdIGVe
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Information from: The Times, http://www.thetimesonline.com