Before you demolish that house or building, consider letting firefighters use it
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IDAHO FALLS — Do you have a home or building that you are thinking about tearing down? Look no further. A local fire department would like to use it for live burns and training purposes.
The Idaho Falls Fire Department is welcoming its newest recruits to the department; however, the department is in need of a structure to use for its 10-week intensive academy.
Sean Allen, a captain with the Idaho Falls Fire Department, is in charge of helping with the academy, which will begin on Jan. 17.
“They learn everything from EMS and ambulance operations to rope rescue, vehicle extrication, and the final for the entire course is a live burn exercise,” Allen said. “Because we try to prepare them for an as realistic situation as we can, we try to conduct those burns in an actual structure, and that’s why we asked for structures to be donated so that we can provide those opportunities.”
In the past, companies like Ball Ventures have donated vacant property.
There’s a post currently on the department’s Facebook saying, “If you know of a property owner, builder, contractor, or someone else in the housing/building industry that may know of a structure that is about to be demolished, please pass the word along.”
The Idaho Falls Fire Department does have a training tower, but there are limited training capabilities at the site.
“We are not able to burn in it, so the extent that we can use for that is rope rescue operations off the top of the tower and basically extending hoses up and down the stairwell,” Allen said.
Plus, the facility is old. It was built in the early 1960s.
“It just does not serve the needs that we have right now for our department and not just our fire and EMS but also our specialty teams, including swift water rescue and hazmat … so there are additional needs that we have right now that the 1960s facility will just not accommodate,” said Kerry Hammon, spokeswoman with the Idaho Falls Fire Department.
There’s another challenge. They don’t always know if they will have donated structures available.
“We use them to the extent that we can. They are usually demolished, and then something else is put in their place, so we will never know if we will have that structure available when we need it,” she said.
A committee within the Idaho Falls Fire Department is looking at the needs and challenges faced for training. They are looking for more permanent solutions for training needs in the future.
Allen said having a structure is one of the most important parts of the training.
“Structure fires are less frequent than the EMS calls we go on. Our recruits get less exposure to those events, so we try and give them that foundation as well as we can through these live-fire activities,” he said.
The training on the structure isn’t just for burning.
“We also train them to ladder the rooftops and cut holes in the roof to ventilate the hot gases generated by those fires, so by the time we are done training in a structure, it’s relatively destroyed, and with the number of recruits that we have to train, we’ll need as many structures as we can get,” Allen said.
This year, Allen explained, there will be 15 recruits in the academy, which is more than they have ever had. Normally, they have five to six recruits per year.
“It’s a demand that the department has never been faced with,” Allen said.
The recruits will be working at a new fire station that will open in the spring located at 370 East 65th South, which will be named Station 7. They will additionally help cover other fire stations.
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“The Idaho Falls Fire Department not only provides fire and EMS services to the city of Idaho Falls and Bonneville County, but we also provide EMS services to portions of Jefferson and Bingham County, so in essence, we are one of the largest combined full-time, fire and EMS agencies in the state of Idaho,” Hammon explained.
Allen said if anyone is interested in letting firefighters use a structure, it needs to be in good repair.
“It does not have to be habitable, but prior to us burning it, we have to be able to re-sheetrock the walls. It has to have a floor that is sound enough to safely work on, and our hope is that we can conduct multiple fires in the same room,” Allen said. “We prefer structures that are in more rural parts of the county or within city limits but away from other structures.”
If you are interested in helping firefighters, please call Deputy Chief Paul Radford at the Idaho Falls Fire Department Station 1 Headquarters at (208) 612-8495.