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July 21, 2008

Firefighters live training

By Samantha Swindler / Managing Editor

Area firefighters got some real-life training this weekend by setting and then extinguishing fires at two donated houses.

Firefighters from Woodbine, Oak Grove, Campground, Lily, London, Corbin and Three Point fire departments, along with 14 instructors from departments around the state, spent two days practicing with fires set by wooden pallets and hay bales inside the structures.

“We’re going in and doing small fire sets... to teach our firefighters live fire training,” said Mike Parks, inspector with the state fire rescue training team and assistant chief of Woodbine Fire & Rescue. “It gives them experience. Some of the guys are new coming into the fire stations, and they have no live fire experience at all, and this gets them in a controlled environment where they can know whether they still want to be a firefighter or not.”

The two houses belonged to General Shale Brick Company and were located behind the business off Hwy. 26.

“They were going to demolish the houses anyway and they asked us if we wanted to use them for training,” Parks said. “We said great, and we burnt the one over there yesterday and this is the second house, today (Sunday.)”

Firefighters entered the building in teams, each time burning a different room and practicing a different technique. The brick house continued to smoke and smolder throughout the day.

“They won’t put the fire completely out because they’re bringing other crews in,” Parks said. “We’ll put it most of the way out, just enough so we can light it back. If we put it all the way out, it’s hard to light it back again. And we’ll move from room to room inside the house and do something in this room and then move to another part of the house.”

New recruit C.J. Quail was finally able to join the Lily Volunteer Fire Department after turning 18 last month. He’s been out with the department on two house fires but hasn’t actively participated in fighting a house fire yet.

“I’ve been in after it’s been put out and I’ve helped put out hot spots, which is just little flames and stuff, after everybody else is worn out,” Quail said.

Quail is one of the few who doesn’t come from a lineage of firefighters. He said he wanted to join Lily VFD “to help my community” and is the first in his family to do so.

Still, he had to have completed basic firefighter training to even participate in the weekend exercises.

“It’s a lot better than what I expected,” Quail said of the training. “I didn’t think we were going to be able to get right in there in the same room with the fire... We go right in the room and they’ll tell us exactly what to do, exactly how to spray the water, where to spray it. It was a really good learning experience.”

Parks said there isn’t a set number of trainings required each year, and the frequency of training events depends on structures available. Fire departments must make sure the property has no insurance, is safe for firefighters to enter, and has no man-made elements inside.

“We have to take everything out of there that is man made,” Parks said. “We had to take the shingles off, had to take the carpet out, any kind of furnishings, insulation, anything that’s not organic has to come out.”

Because the training took place in a rural area, thousands of gallons of water had to be trucked in to fight the fire. On average, a fully-involved structure fire could require 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of water.

The training was funded by the Kentucky Fire Commission.

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