IL Firefighters Turning Vacant Buildings into Training Sites

Champaign, IL — The former Bergner's at Market Place Mall was used last week as a training site for Champaign firefighters.

No, it's not being torn down, as was the case last month when they trained at Dr. Howard Elementary School.

Instead, firefighters used the vacant mall space to practice rope-assisted searches in an environment they don't often get to practice in.

"What we're doing is nondestructive," said Gary Gula, Champaign's training officer. "There's only low visibility, so we got the lights turned down."

Gula said the space gives the fire department a unique space to train.

"They're allowing us in here to do some training in a type of building we typically aren't able to get into," he said.

With rope-assisted searches, firefighters hook the rope up to something outside the building, follow the 200-foot rope into the building, and then they're able to follow the rope back out.

"Without that rope-assist, you could get too far away, and before you know it, you're out of air and the firefighters wouldn't be able to get out," Gula said. "This enables us to train on that kind of technique."

They've also practiced extending the hose to the second level of the former Bergner's, "to see how much hose it would take if the fire is deeper in the building," Gula said.

Trainings like this are important, he said, especially because of how young the Champaign Fire Department is right now.

"We have a lot of young guys. We hired 50 new firefighters in the last five years because of retirements and such," Gula said. That's about half the department, so "this gives us the opportunity to get good basic-skills training."

He said the mall is letting the department use the space free of charge, as it's vacant and the department isn't doing anything destructive to the space.

"They were very gracious to let us use it," Gula said.

The department usually doesn't pay to train at empty buildings, like at Dr. Howard.

"We worked with the school district at no cost," Gula said.

Because that building was being demolished, they were able to damage the structure.

They forced open doors and opened holes in the roof, to simulate what might be needed to allow hot gasses to escape.

The Champaign Fire Department tries to train at an empty building a few times a year and keeps track of demolition permits.

"Being the fire department, we know when new buildings are being built and when old buildings are getting torn down," Gula said. "We call those, be it the school district or a private business, to see if we can get some training in there, and if so, what we'll be able to do."

Other local fire departments described a similar process for finding buildings to train in.

Urbana usually doesn't have much of a heads-up for these types of trainings, said Chad Hensch, one of Urbana's division chiefs.

He might get notified by the community development or building department that a building is coming down, then "we can work with the contractor to get permission to get in there and do training," Hensch said. "We might only get three or four days of advance notice that a building is coming down, so we scramble to get things together and set up training. Then the next week it's gone."

When Urbana finds a building to train in, it will sign an agreement to remove the contractor's liability.

"So if any of our guys get hurt, we're not going to sue the contractor," Hensch said. "And we agree typically to clean up all our mess. So if we scratch a wall or break a door by accident, then we're going to fix that for them because we understand that if the building's not coming down, then we want to leave it in the condition we found it in."

If the building is coming down, the fire department will work with the contractor to make sure the site is safe, such as making sure all the asbestos is removed, before training there.

And then afterward, it will make sure the site is secured so that no one enters the building.

In 2014, the fire department got to train with live fire at the Urbana Townhomes on Lierman Avenue after the city condemned the buildings.

"The fire department got a benefit out of that, and when the contractor came through to clean them out, they didn't have as much to haul off," Hensch said.

But it was a bit of a process to get the burn approved, as the city had to make sure nearby properties wouldn't be damaged.

"That permit process takes three or four months," Hensch said. There's a lot of work involved. Taking photos, making sure the asbestos is out, inspections, paperwork, a safety plan, and then of course daily operations. You're still trying to provide coverage to the city in case a real fire happens."

Normally live fire training is left to the Illinois Fire Service Institute, which has eight burn buildings in Champaign.

"There's the six-story tower you can see from the street, a two-story building, a number of single-story props, a three-story streetscape. There's a couple of ranch houses, a couple of shipping container props," said Jim Keiken, deputy director of the institute. "There's no place else in the state like that."The fire institute will bring fire departments to Champaign to train or go to a fire department to train them where they're at.

In those cases, "the local departments get the permits, and we do the training," Keiken said.

The Cornbelt Fire Protection District in Mahomet has trained in schools and as the area's water and dive rescue team, regularly trains in the Lake of the Woods.

Fire Chief John Koller said the department does an average of 600 hours of training each month, which he said is important for both new firefighters and veterans.

"Training is one of our number one things we do," he said. "For the kind of low-frequency, high-risk calls, whether for hazardous materials or even fire suppressions that aren't hugely common for anyone anymore, it's important for us to train."

———

Visit The News-Gazette (Champaign, Ill.) at www.news-gazette.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.