Demo houses for fire training?

[lilpup]

Thinking about all the properties the city wants to get rid of coupled with the cash shortage...could some of these properties be used for fire fighting training on a large scale? It seems there would be many possible scenarios that could be staged - single house, industrial, possibly even block sized conflagrations - the city could host other fire departments - virtually a training convention - while at the same time getting a lot of demolition costs taken care of.

[Lowell]

30,000 training fires ought to get them well trained. Seriously though, I wonder if the cost of removing a burned-down house wouldn't cost more than straight forward demolition. Also I am guessing this would create controversy over where the smoke goes. As always the due process red tape required to figure out and gain title doesn't change.

[Mikeg]

For many years, most big-city Fire Departments have been using using facilities that are specially built for safely training their firefighters in controlled circumstances. Fifty years or more ago, burning old buildings for training small-city firefighters was accepted practice, but with the advent of regional fire science training facilities, that is no longer needed.

Here's photos of a DFD skills exhibition held at Ladder No. 5 [[circa 1917):


Attachment 7005
Lowering a "victim" from the tower at LAdder NO. 5

Attachment 7006
Resuscitating a "victim" using the "Lung Motor".

Attachment 7007
Preparing for a controlled burn.

[Mikeg]

Photos of a circa 1917 DFD skills exhibition held at Ladder No. 5 - continued:

Attachment 7008
Placing the "store".

Attachment 7009
Making the run.

Attachment 7010
A tense moment.

[Magnatomicflux]

cool pics Mikeg. Although I think it's a great learing tool, there's too much risk involved for the firefighters. The simulators they have now are controlled, many of these already dried out, decrepid homes would quickly become "surround and drown" senerios. The floors likely already have a good chance of collapse with people on them, let alone while being on fire, or having a couple tons of water pouring on them every minute. It would only cause the lost of firefighters.

[Meddle]

Rural departments used to do this quite a bit and it was very successful as a training tool. The the EPA got involved.

Now, before you can burn one for training, you have to pull the shingles and siding off and remove certain other things that might give off noxious gasses. Gets expensive to do that.

[CLAUDE G]

Its not a bad idea, but If I lived next to an abandoned home or even a few doors away I would not want this happening as there is a chance the fire could get out of control and burn down my house.

The homes that can be done this way are the ones where the home is the last one standing on a block

[GaryFD]

As Meddle pointed out, there's a lot of prep work that goes into a "controlled burn" along with EPA & state safety rules that have to be followed. Also there have been countless injuries & deaths with this type of training unfortunately, most departments prefer more controlled fires at training centers. I know of several rural departments here that use "live burns" since they don't have many working fires.

[DetroitPlanner]

I side with Claude, I don't want the house 5 feet away from me burning! too close for comfort.

[Rocko]

I stopped to watch some of the 4 hour inferno which happened on the west side on the afternoon of the 4th of July this year, and noticed several members of the New Baltimore FD arrived with Detroit engines and were watching and carefully following along with what the DFD was doing to get the situation under control. Training?

[Packman41]

There is NO need to travel to Detroit to do any realistic training. Every township/municipality has an overabundance of vacant foreclosed homes on which to practice. I live in Bloomfield Twp. and there was a vacant home four streets from mine that the Township Fire Department used for training for about 4 weeks. They never burned the place, just door breaking, roof venting and so forth. Afterwards the bank demo'ed the place and they now have a 1 acre lot for sale with a low real estate tax bill. No need to drive long distances for practice.