Benefits

Is there a CFO anywhere who does not live day and night with the heavy burden of responsibility for the safety of his/her firefighters? Who in their right mind could send friends, comrades, sons and daughters into a burning building without a very real sense of the moral and legal responsibility they incur by doing so? Despite the best-laid plans, things happen. Roofs collapse, people trip, walls tumble, stair banisters fail.

At WHP, we believe that even one life lost in a training fire is one too many. We believe in training - - state-of-the-art training. The best training practices available, the best training tools available.

Our challenge is not to convince the fire service of the need for safe training buildings for live burns. YOU know this as well, if not better, than we do. That is, after all, why you came to WHP's website. More often, the difficulty lies in convincing the governing body, already strapped by demands for more money to provide all of the various needs of the community, the value of investing in firefighter safety. It is a sad- but-true scenario that money for training, equipment, and manpower tends to flow much more freely AFTER, not BEFORE a catastrophic event involving loss of life.

What factors make having a live fire training building appeal to your community or organization?

For starters, fire training isn’t what it was 40 years ago. At that time it was commonplace to train in acquired structures. Someone wanted to get rid of an old house, they gave it to the fire department, it was used for S/R practice for a while, then it was burned to the ground, no further questions asked. This is no longer the case. To begin with, environmental laws are such that you can no longer just burn. You now have to know what you are putting into the environment when you ignite an acquired structure. (Asbestos removal alone can cost as much as ten thousand dollars.) Even more importantly, just how safe is this structure? What about the floors, the walls? How structurally sound is it? (If it’s in good shape, why are they burning it!) How safe are your firefighters inside of it?

A second major consideration, one that we as fire service professionals can be very proud of, is the fact that we are seeing some of the fruits of the fire prevention measures that we have worked for years to put in place. It’s a rare home any more that doesn’t have a smoke detector . We have succeeded in making the public more aware, more careful, more thoughtful. This translates to fewer fires. What in former days amounted to “on-the-job” training doesn’t occur as frequently as it used to. In some communities, it is possible for a shift to go months at a time without actually encountering a fire of a serious nature. If you leave it to “on-the-job” training, your new recruit may have never faced anything larger than a trash can fire when he/she is called upon to enter a burning house for a rescue effort.

Firefighter training is a MUST. It’s required by law. Even without the law it’s a common sense issue. How can you present your training needs in such a way that your governing board sees the value to be gained by providing live fire training?

Perhaps by posing and answering some key questions.

What about firefighter safety – clearly the most important issue? Who is responsible? Who answers to the spouse, parent, child of someone seriously injured or killed in a training fire? Who answers to the legal authorities if the firefighter was inadequately trained?

How do our firefighters currently train and where? Do they go out of district? If so, who covers for them while they are gone? Who is protecting our community?

Is our current training adequate? What is it costing us to train right now? Where are we training? Are we “renting” training space from another municipality? Are we paying overtime? Are we paying travel time? Do we run into scheduling issues?

What would having a live fire training building do to our ISO ratings? Would it save the community money in the long run. Would it allow us to meet training requirements for Firefighter I and II “in-house”? Or perhaps offer these services to other groups.

What about multi-jurisdictional fires, what about mutual aid agreements? Do we, or will we likely work with other organizations? If so, how well will we work together if we’ve never had the opportunity to do so before? What about chain-of-command?

How about financing? Might some of the costs be alleviated by partnering with industry? With a local educational facility? Might we see some income from making the building available for other organizations for a user’s fee.

The live fire conditions and challenges that can be created in a training tower give fire departments and districts confidence that their firefighters walk into real emergencies with the preparation they deserve. They are training in realistic but safe conditions. This results in lives saved – the most important measure of success for us and all firefighting professionals.