BY DAVE GILLESPIE
After asking officials for weeks, we received permission in a brief, 15-minute meeting, with the following condition, “Okay, you can use King Edward School, but you can’t damage it or burn it!” We had just received approval to use the vacant, 100-year-old elementary school in our inner city for firefighter training (photo 1).
 (1) Photos by author unless otherwise noted. |
What training can you do with an old elementary school built in 1907 that you are not allowed to damage? The answer: Everything! We designed dozens of firefighter skill scenarios in an historic structure and left it with minimal damage.
The Peterborough Fire Department (PFD) serves a city of 74,000 and is located 100 miles northeast of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The PFD has 80 career firefighters and 19 support staff (including one training officer). Like many small to mid-sized departments, the PFD has only an old tower that is best suited for training new recruits and no other fire training facility inside its municipality. So we needed to improvise.
After receiving approval to use the school, we toured the structure and quickly designed skills-based evolutions our firefighters needed to learn and practice, including Search Patterns, Wall Breach, Wire Disentanglement, the Denver Drill, Search and Rescue of a residential apartment and an office, Mayday Simulation, and Wall Collapse (photo 2).
 (2) Photo by Lance Anderson, Peterborough This Week. |
Friends from Palm Beach County (FL) Fire Rescue once said, “In the heat of the battle, we will always revert to our training.” To do just that, we designed scenarios to be as realistic as possible, so the firefighters could develop automatic responses.
BRIEFING ROOM
We converted the first-grade classroom into our briefing room and equipped it with old tables and chairs, an old fridge with cold water for rehab, spare SCBA, and a blackboard. The city mapping department produced motivational posters with phrases like “Everybody Goes Home,” “It will be your friends that save you,” “Stay with your friends,” and “Keep the Faith.”
Each training class would start in the briefing room. Remember that high school teacher who talked and talked? It was boring. Firefighters need to learn by doing, so the training lecture was limited to 10 minutes. From there, participants could go only to the next evolution room, since the other rooms were full of secret challenges ahead.
CLUTTERED APARTMENT
The kindergarten classroom was converted into a three-bedroom apartment. It was arranged with beds, crib, stove, fridge, couches, kitchen tables, and a bicycle, to recreate a common cluttered apartment. The ceiling was 15 feet high, so it posed unique construction problems such as how to secure fake interior walls. Using their construction talents, the instructors built an improvised eight-foot- high drop ceiling that resembled a grid of 2 × 4s. This allowed us to move walls and keep them secured. When firefighters searched the rooms, bounced off the walls and doorways, and pulled the rescue manikin out, there was no flex or movement of the walls. The materials used to create the scenario included 50 pieces of 2 × 4 × 16 lumber, 16 pegboard walls, screws, and furniture, costing about $800 (photo 3).
 Photo 3 |
OFFICE
We converted the second-grade classroom into a typical office with eight workstations, desks, chairs, lounge area, and filing cabinets. Identifying furniture such as a sofa in a residential house is easy, but try keeping your bearings in an office with multiple desks and computers.
We introduced room orientation skills learned in the 2004 Fire Department Instructors Conference Firefighter Survival workshop specifically from a firefighter with a Fire Department of New York rescue company. The tips offered there included how to develop a good physical sense of what your hands are touching and how to mentally construct a room layout so you can always point to the nearest exit (photo 4).
 Photo 4 |
MAYDAY
We converted the third-grade classroom into the Mayday evolution room. Inspired by Dr. Burton Clark’s exercise at the National Fire Academy, we created a simulation of a firefighter becoming trapped, recognizing it, and calling in a Mayday. The firefighter’s task started at the nozzle (i.e., the interior of the structure); he had to follow the hoseline into the room, attempting to backtrack out to the pumper and command. During their return to “outside,” participants faced challenges such as a ceiling collapse (simulated using chain-link fencing dropped from above), in which they become pinned (photo 5).
 Photo 5 |
Once a firefighter was pinned by the instructors, he had 30 seconds to recognize it, communicate a CLAN (Conditions, Location, Actions, Needs) report to command, and request a rapid intervention team (RIT). If participants failed to do this, we coached them with calls from command requesting a progress report.
Anyone who failed to call for help in a reasonable time was listed as an LODD on the adjacent blackboard. However, the goal was to condition firefighters to adopt a new behavior of calling for help and not letting their egos interfere. This took a lot of coaching to ensure everyone got the idea.
The other Mayday obstacles included a simulated floor collapse from high up a ramp into a 4- × 6-foot wooden box consisting of sofa cushions.
There was a scenario involving a wire entanglement around the air cylinder valve wheel and one in which the firefighter was in a closet with both exits blocked. Each time the firefighter made a Mayday call with complete information on his conditions, location, and need, command dispatched the RIT and the instructor released him and told him to carry the hoseline to the exit.
These props were reconstructed from Clark’s presentation and took one day to build. Materials consisted of 10 feet of chain-link fencing, four pallets, two plywood sheets, one door, foam blocks, four 2 × 4s, six feet of wire, and 100 feet of hoseline. Total cost of materials was $50.
The basement storage rooms were used for the introductory evolutions, which each firefighter had to complete before moving up to the main floor. We constructed four rooms with the following evolutions in this order: wire entanglement, wall breaching, maze, and the Denver drill. Written descriptions of the techniques and their significance were posted on the doors and walls adjacent to the evolution area. We also posted profiles of firefighter fatalities [such as that of Mark Langvardt of the Denver (CO) Fire Department, in 1992] and others in large 20-point type for the crews to read before participating in the evolution.
WIRE ENTANGLEMENT
The wire-disentanglement scenario was built inside a 2 × 4 frame measuring 16 × 4 × 6 feet. Wires included various types and gauges (telephone cords, network cables, stereo and standard electric wire, and heavier cables). Instructors demonstrated the method of escape from wire entanglements in this hallway setup; firefighters immediately applied these skills individually and then with partners. Mayday calls and radio transmissions were live. Instructors set up the wires, entangled the firefighters, and let them problem solve (photo 6). The instructors’ rules were never to interfere with those near success or those about to fail. Another rule was that participants could always repeat the evolution.
 Photo 6 |
Materials for this setup included 10 pieces of 2 × 4 × 10 lumber, wires, and screws, costing a total of $50.
THE MAZE
The Maze was an entire 30- × 30- foot room that we turned into an adjustable maze, using 50 pallets donated from a local business that usually recycled them. The pallets were screwed into the concrete floor and braced on top with 2 × 4s. Used cardboard was spread throughout the room to cover the smooth surface of floor and create some distraction to feel. A playground tunnel, ramps, wire entanglement, and a low-profile maneuver scenario were creative obstacles added by instructors (photos 7, 8).
 Photo 7 |
 Photo 8 |
Materials used included 50 pallets, 2 × 4 braces, screws, wire, cardboard, and a stereo, totaling $75.
Firefighters had to search for a manikin of a two-year old boy and give progress reports (CLAN) and room orientation information (e.g., on Charlie side). Once they found the manikin, members had to decide whether to backtrack or proceed to the nearest exit. On exit, the crew put their perception skills to the test by drawing the layout of the maze on a blackboard, the location of victim, and problem areas they would improve the next time.
Wall Breach was a standard setup of a portable wall with 16-inch studs (photo 9). We also constructed the Denver Drill in a narrow closet similar to where Mark Langvardt was trapped. Walls were built according to photos from FDIC 2004 and an article describing the rescue efforts (“Confined Space Claims Denver Firefighter in a Tragic Building Fire,” Fire Engineering, April 1993, 59-66). Once firefighters heard and read the story, they gave 110 percent.
 Photo 9 |
In all evolutions, we used facepieces darkened with laminated automobile window tinting and, the latest idea, 3/8 -inch-thick open cell foam that provided a distorted but semitransparent view, another great idea from Palm Beach County (FL) Fire Rescue. We also conducted live radio transmissions on a tactical channel. The firefighters had previously trained in calm conditions with little noise distraction, so a stereo was used to provide sounds of a smoke alarm and fire on a CD. Set to mid-volume, it provided enough interference that firefighters had to develop very clear voice projection and provide quality radio transmissions.
Since we were not allowed to damage the structure, we used HVAC smoke bombs that were used in testing the HVAC systems seals. The bombs produce smoke for anywhere from 30 seconds to five minutes and can fill small to large rooms. They cost about $5 for five minutes of smoke produced.
In the end, the firefighters who participated completed more than 2,000 hours of training. The cost for creating the scenarios and supplies was under $1,500. One firefighter said it was the best “real-life” training he had ever had. With no buyer or renovations planned, King Edward School was demolished after we had used it for seven months. The old school had taught its final class to firefighters.
LESSONS LEARNED
• Ask. You never know. The school board and city had never been asked to do such a thing before. They approved it. We asked a local home improvement store for its warped 2 × 4s for a week. Instead, we received a 75- percent discount on all wood supplies used for this project.
• Community relations. We sent a letter describing our plans on department letterhead with an attached business card to each neighbor of the school. We went door-to-door, inviting the locals to see what we were doing at the old school. Every day we were on-site, we put out a sign by the street announcing “Fire Department Training Operations.”
One unexpected asset was the 10-year-old boy who was always around by the trucks and eventually had his parents call the police when he saw vandals breaking school windows.
• Minimize downtime, and keep it moving. Firefighters just want to do it, not wait around. All briefings were kept to 10 minutes. With a multistage training building, a crew of four firefighters could move from evolution to evolution with minimal downtime. Do it, debrief it, and move on. Identify lessons learned, and apply them within five minutes.
• People, not money, make a difference. This was the biggest lesson. It doesn’t take just money to make a great training facility; it takes a team of innovative instructors, a supportive community, and firefighters ready to play, sweat, and learn.
DAVE GILLESPIE is the chief training officer for the Peterborough Fire Department, in Ontario, Canada. He is an associate instructor with the Ontario Fire College and Sir Sandford Fleming College. He specializes in swiftwater rescue, haz mat operations, flashover recognition, and firefighter survival techniques.
