You’re sitting at your desk, reviewing NFPA 1403: Standard on Live Fire Training Evolutions and your department’s burn plan for the scheduled engine company training at your burn house. Are you concerned about which direction the wind will be blowing that day? Or perhaps whether you remembered to give 2 weeks’ notice of the night training to the neighbors? If you answered “yes” to either question, you likely have a design or planning flaw in your training facility. Flaws of this nature usually cost a lot of money–and considerable time–to remedy. Hopefully, with some forethought and good planning, you can avoid these issues all together. Design issues related to training facilities is one of the topics I addressed in my session, “Training Facilities: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly,” at the annual Fire Industry Equipment Research Organization’s (F.I.E.R.O.) Fire Station Design Symposium, which took place Nov. 3—5 in Charlotte, N.C. (See p. 16 for a list of the F.I.E.R.O. Fire Station Design Award winners.) An architect and a firefighter, I know what works and what doesn’t, and I hope to pass on some of this information to you.
Real-Life Design Issues
The concerns addressed above about wind direction and giving neighbors notice of burn activities are actual issues related to training facilities in my area. What caused the issues at these facilities? Location. Location. Location.
First, worrying about which way the wind will blow at the burn building is the result of building a training facility on a small piece of donated property that development encroached upon at a later date. After a few homes were smoked out due to wind speeds and directions, strict burn policies were put into place at the facility to prevent neighbors from complaining. Now the facility can’t hold live-fire training anytime winds come in from the northwest (the predominant winds) or from Nov. 1 to March 30, due to air inversions.
Second, the issue with night training was the result of building a training facility on the edge of an upscale neighborhood. The permission to build the facility was granted with the understanding that the facility would not create noise and the department would limit night training to minimize disturbances to neighbors. For example, fire apparatus are not to use their air horns or sirens, and neighbors must be notified in advance of night training.
Are these compromises you are willing to accept? These examples involve donated land or long-term, low-cost leases. Be wary of these “bargains”; they seem like a good idea at the time, but the limits placed on the sites often become incredibly burdensome–and often more expensive than you expect.
Selecting a Location
There are many factors to consider when purchasing property for a training center:
Climate & Weather: What is the weather pattern at the site throughout the year? Are there significant winds that blow in a certain direction and, therefore, into neighborhoods? Do you have weather inversions that hold smoke to the ground during the winter months? Is there an interstate or major road near your site that will be affected if wind blows smoke from your facility in its direction? If you think the road will be shut down, you’re wrong; your training burns will be shut down first.
Runoff: Where will the runoff water go? If the site is next to a waterway or private wells, you’ll need to build a containment system–and it will need to be maintained. The days of letting oil or foam-laden water find its own course have passed.
Soils: Are they conducive for the construction of heavy buildings, or will you be putting in special foundations and over-excavating to provide a suitable base for the drive paths? The type of soil on which you choose to build will greatly impact your building costs. Swamp land is expensive to build on, even if it’s free.
Neighbors: Be very cautious about selecting a site next to residential areas. Most people don’t like it when their homes become filled with smoke from a Class A burn. I’ve witnessed air inversions and winds that keep smoke at ground level for a half-mile from the burn. It’s best to find a location where there’s a buffer between the site and a neighborhood. Better yet, find an area that’s nowhere near a neighborhood. Additionally, try to select a site that’s large enough to avoid encroachment from future development.
Think about your training facility like it’s a manufacturing facility capable of creating pollution. Why? You have heavy trucks and numerous cars entering your facilities, and these vehicles require parking areas. You have water runoff that may need to be captured, and you produce airborne particles. With this in mind, consider these possible neighbors: rail yards, sewage treatment plants, industrial areas, warehouses and used gravel-producing areas. Large, green spaces are also viable. People bike or walk by, observe the fire trucks or training and then move on.
My experience has shown that facilities near rail lines, green spaces, sewage plants or warehouses operate without constraints. But put a few single-family homes or a major roadway within view, and the compromises and restrictions begin to take hold.
Drainage: Drainage can be a significant problem if not addressed properly. Design a drainage system as if the facility will be exposed to torrential rain for long periods of time–even if this is not at all likely. Engines and aerials can flow large volumes of water, and that water needs a path out. If buildings and drives aren’t properly designed, the water will seep under every piece of asphalt and concrete. Couple that with 20-ton apparatus, and the wear will take effect very quickly.
There may also be a temptation to forgo curbs and gutters and a site drain system. I’ve seen many facilities where the concrete and roadway drop off to dirt. You might be able to get away with this if your soil type is sandy and drains well. If not, forget it.
It takes little time for soil and grasses to build up to the edge of the road and prevent drainage. Pooling quickly occurs, and the soil around the roadway begins to get soft. Pretty soon your brand new aerial (often with a brand new driver) comes up the driveway, cuts the corner and ends up in the dirt. In an instant, the edge of your roadway has been broken up, possibly trapping that brand new aerial. Another reason for adequate drainage: You don’t want the waters to migrate unabated into a nearby ditch, waterway or neighbors’ wells.
A better idea: Trap the water and give it a place to go. Wetlands can be created so the water quality is monitored and treated, and the neighbors think it’s great when there are birds and deer roaming near your facility. Wetlands are a great water filter. One item that has caught us somewhat by surprise: If you flow a lot of foam, it has a tendency to make the surrounding soils much more conducive to absorbing water. You may find you lose the standing water in your wetland very quickly due to the surfactant qualities of the foam, and you may need to add a few hundred gallons of water from time to time. Also be wary of the foams you use. I recommend using training foams, as they mimic the foams you’ll use on the fireground but lack many of the chemicals that can damage the environment.
What You Need
Now that we addressed the facility’s location, what type of training do you plan to conduct and what facilities will you need for this? Four things always surface at the top of the list: burn buildings, towers, classrooms and pumping facilities.
Burn Buildings (Class A Fuels): I’ve participated in hundreds of burns at five facilities over the last few years, and I’ve found that each burn building has a distinct personality. Some get very hot and burn clean and quickly; others have poor fire behavior in some rooms and great fire behavior in others. It’s hard to predict how they’ll work until you spend some time in each one. With that in mind, visit as many burn buildings as possible, talk to the users, get inside and try out the facility. The more you do this, the better off you’ll be when planning your own.
Here are a few suggestions that come to mind for burn buildings:
- The bigger the better. The bigger the building, the longer it takes to get hot and the more smoke production you can expect.
- Consider adding moveable panels. They’re often hard to move, but they do prevent crews from preplanning the facility (which we all know does happen).
- Outside decks are great. If you install them, ensure they’re big enough to have a prepositioned line to be in accordance with NFPA 1403 requirements.
- Different ceiling heights and interior profiles are helpful for generating different fire behaviors.
- Very air-tight buildings can create smoke, but they can also self-extinguish while crews are setting up.
- Another useful tool is a vent prop on the top of the building. Vent props offer solid training on fire behavior/fire attack strategy.
- Ensure your doors are cut so you can stretch a 1 3?4″ or 2″ attack line into the facility and shut the door without pinching it. Keeping smoke in a facility can be difficult so having a door that can close after the attack crew enters is useful. Use a piece of old hose to create a flap at the bottom of the door to prevent air movement in or out of the facility.
- While you’re at it, add an outside electrical receptacle (or two) and a forcible entry simulator to the door jamb as additional training alternatives. They are both relatively inexpensive items that add to the building’s functionality.
Towers: Again, bigger is better, and make sure you have plenty of decks and outside stairs. On the interior, each floor should feature a different layout; even the smallest change can give you many different opportunities. Forget about the elevator shaft or the fake elevator. I’ve seen these props in many towers, and they are seldom used. Instead, use that space (and money) for a second room on that floor or as another outside deck. Interior standpipes are a plus, as are sprinkler heads on an upper floor that are controlled by a shut-off valve. It’s a great exercise for a rookie firefighter to wedge a sprinkler head shut and then work to get the water off a third or fourth floor.
Consider positioning telephone poles in proximity to the tower, and have the local cable or electric company workers hang some fake lines for you. This is a great way for them to train their new folks, and it gives your ladder companies a test to see if they can get the aerial to the fourth floor without touching the lines. Every once in a while, restring the tower and poles to create additional obstacles. A seemingly random design both inside and outside the tower offers the best flexibility for training. Each side should look significantly different as you walk around it. While you’re at it, position the burn building nearby so you’re forced to deal with exposure control issues.
Classrooms: They are great to have, but watch out for the operations and maintenance (O&M) that follows. The O&M has caught us by surprise: Areas regularly need to be cleaned, and you need some high-tech equipment and the knowledge to use it. Forget about the carpet and go with a hard surface; it’s noisy but it’s easier to clean. Also, ask yourself: Do you need break rooms? How close are the restrooms? Classrooms bring on a new level of commitment to your organization. Are you ready for it? Classrooms attract a lot of requests for use. With that increased usage, your O&M goes up. Lastly, there’s never enough storage–I cannot say this enough. If you think you have enough, double it.
Pumping Facilities: Every facility needs a good pump pit or pumping area. Most pump pits are in the 25,000- to 30,000-gallon range and are fairly tried and true. The pump pit must function in a certain manner to be used to certify apparatus pumps and new driver/operators, so if you get creative, I recommend finding a hydraulic engineer to put their pen to it. There are a lot of good designs out there; find one you like and use it. I’ve seen poorly designed pump pits pour more water onto the pavement than goes back into the pit, as well as pits where the movement of the water in the pit is so turbulent that the engine has trouble maintaining a draft. Finally, make sure the pit is high enough above grade so water drains away from the pit, as standing water pooling around the pit can cause the concrete of the ramps, and maybe the pit itself, to crack and break up. Repairs to the pumping pit can be extremely costly if it moves or shifts.
Final Thoughts
There are many other factors to consider when planning a training facility: reserve engine warehousing, office spaces, showers and restrooms, mobile homes for training, specialty rescue training sites and props, driving courses, bunker gear storage and cleaning, compressor rooms, command posts and fuel pumps. The list goes on and on.
My best advice: Spend a good deal of time looking at facilities in your area before you build or add on. If you can, participate in training at these facilities. You can learn a lot in a short time and, hopefully, come away with a solid knowledge base on training-facility design. And did I mention that there’s never enough storage? Good luck training!
