Simulator system facilitates training
Dispatches
As part of a five-year, $500,000 rehabilitation project, the New York City Fire Department’s (FDNY) training academy is renovating its fire and heat building to accommodate a new fire training simulator system. The system, expected to begin a trial period this spring, was developed and tailored for FDNY requirements based on research and development done by Austin Electronics for the Norfolk, VA, Naval Base, which has a similar training simulator.
Heat, smoke, and flame can be controlled from either the console itself, located in a separate room inside the fire building, or by an instructor with a remote control device in the fire area. The control panel gives digital readouts of temperatures and air quality, and enables the instructor to determine the level of fire growth. The walls and ceilings of the department’s existing fire building are being covered with 1/4-inch Cor-ten steel plates to allow for thermal expansion and contraction. Thermal couples are being installed to determine the various heat ranges that will be set at eight-, five-, and two-foot levels.
Since handline evolutions are practiced in this building, sensors will record if the water is being properly applied. If not, the fire will grow and rollover conditions will develop three to five feet across the ceiling, said Deputy Chief Joe Mills, FDNY training division’s executive officer.
There are also safety factors built into the system, Chief Mills said, including emergency shutdown, venting fans, and air quality controls to measure the levels of propane and oxygen.
All of the more than 1,500 training fires set in the old fire building were of clean wood due to the limitation on the type of combustibles that can be safely used. With the new system, propane burners will fuel the mock-up fire situations. Not only will we be better able to control the temperature levels and fire conditions, said Chief Mills, but we can run one training session after another without having to take time out for restaging.
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This training building enables probationary firefighters to learn not only how to stretch lines and extinguish fires, but to become familiar with the feel of heat, the smell of smoke, and the use of their self-contained breathing apparatus.
The academy has five training buildings designed to simulate the various types of structures found in New York City, and the different conditions that firefighters faced.
This fire simulator system is the first of its kind in an urban fire training school. According to an Austin Electronics’ spokesman, the Navy installed a similar, yet more complex computer-operated system two years ago at their Norfolk Naval Base and is getting better than 98% operational usage. The training system is in use daily, simulating shipboard firefighting incidents, said an official from the naval base’s civilian fire department. Both civilian and military fire personnel train with the system, the “fire building” being laid out like the different parts of a ship. At presstime, local Virginia fire departments were scheduled to train on the Navy’s simulator as well.
Austin Electronics, a division of The Austin Company, is based in Fair Lawn, NJ, where most of the work for the FDNY simulator was done. The company is involved in the design, manufacture, and installation of systems employing applications of electronics, mechanics, and computer science.
