Phase one of the Bonnyville Regional Fire Authority's (BRFA) fire training facility is complete and firefighters in the surrounding areas will now have an opportunity to train right here in Bonnyville.
“I think the entire department is extremely excited to have the first phase of the facility in place. This is a major accomplishment of a lot of volunteer hours from all of the guys in the area (and the) contributions from the town and the MD of Bonnyville as well as several companies that have come forward and have put funds into this tower,” said BRFA Fire Chief Brian McEvoy.
The first phase of the facility, which went up on Aug. 24, consists of a live fire training building. The building, which is fabricated from steel sea cans, has a two-story section as well as a four-story tower. McEvoy said it will allow fire fighters to train in structural fire fighting techniques and obtain their NFPA 1001 professional fire fighter certification in an environment that closely emulates a real life fire situation.
“This comes very close to real fire situations. This building has two separate burn rooms that are designed for burning and we can light fires in these burn rooms that will approximate the same heat as a regular structure fire,” said McEvoy.
“(We can) actually light fires in the building and have guys enter the building, find the fires, search for victims and then extinguish the fires,” he added. “We have a multi-angled roof simulator that the guys can train on to learn how to do vertical ventilation or ventilation through the roof. The tower itself is designed for multi-story fire fighter training; working with stand pipes and post systems in buildings like we have in many of the four-story buildings in town. It's also engineered and designed to do high angle training on, so we can do all of our high angle training for high angle rescue off this tower.”
McEvoy said they will be able to generate heats in excess of a thousand degrees inside the building and “It's as close as you can get to fighting a real fire safely.”
He said anytime a fire fighter can train in a facility like this one that so closely replicates that of a real life fire situation, they will be better and more prepared for their job outside of training.
“Any time fire fighters can train in live fire situations that are controlled and safe it makes them a better fire fighter. This gives them the real experience and the real appreciation for the job they're doing with minimum risk. The more time they spend here and fighting fires here, the better prepared they are for the uncontrolled conditions of a real fire.”
But training in a facility that imitates a live fire situation is not the only advantage to having the live fire building erected just outside of Bonnyville. McEvoy said the new facility, which sits on a piece of property near the MD of Bonnyville's shop a few minutes north of Bonnyville, allows fire fighters from fire departments in the surrounding areas to come and train on a more convenient schedule.
“That's probably one of the biggest advantages. We will have full control of our training schedules. We won't be dependent on other agencies and other municipalities lending or renting us their facilities and the easier it is for our guys to train, the more training they'll do.”
Before they obtained the new training facility, McEvoy explained that the BRFA could only do theory training here in Bonnyville and were forced to do hands-on training at facilities in neighbouring communities, which is a costly process. He said with the new facility the cost to train fire fighters would be significantly lower.
“We ran a course last year where we did all of the theory training here (in Bonnyville) and we went and spent two days at Leduc County's training facility. For us to take 23 fire fighters and instructors to Leduc County for two days of that course, it cost us $18,000 and change. We can do that same course here for in the area of $5,000–$6,000. A major benefit for us to be able to do the training locally.”
McEvoy said the advantages as far as expenses go by having the fire training facility here in Bonnyville was a big part of the decision to build the facility in the first place.
He said the BFRA started considering the project seriously when their fire fighters started getting into their advanced training.
“We were looking at what it was costing us in time and money to be sending our fire fighters to Vermilion where they had to take a week off work or take a week of their holidays to go or we had to do it in large groups on weekends in other counties and cities. We started looking at that and then we started looking around at some of the options for how we could do this training.”
That's when McEvoy met with Mike Bailey, owner of Fire Training Solutions, the company that fabricated the live fire building, at a conference for the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association and began discussing ideas.
McEvoy said they were back and forth on ideas for the facility for about 6-8 months and finally started making some headway when the MD of Bonnyville decided to build a new shop just north of Bonnyville and set aside both funds and a piece of property for the facility to be situated on.
“We talked to MD council about having a piece of this property set aside for a training facility. Council of the day agreed to set aside a piece of (it's) property for a fire training facility and they also agreed to put $60,000 into the cost of this facility,” explained McEvoy.
From there, McEvoy said the town of Bonnyville offered to match the $60,000 put up by the MD. The rest of the funding came from numerous donations from business owners in the community and hours of volunteer work by the Bonnyville Fire Fighters Association.
Once the funds were in place, it was just a matter of consulting Bailey and fire fighters in the area to come up with an appropriate design for the facility.
“Once we had that level of commitment, we were able to design the building. We started designing the building working with fire fighters who are primarily going to be using it, looking at the training needs that we had. (We) had the design, got the pricing, and then we went back to MD council and as soon as we had all the money confirmed we went about basically building the building.
“It was about 18 months from the time we said go on the design to today,” clarified McEvoy.
But the live fire training building is only the first phase of a potential multi-phase project. McEvoy said they plan to add a second phase in 2013 that will basically consist of a 50 ft. by 50 ft. concrete pad for industrial fire training and may add more over the years depending on the needs of the BRFA. He said they are waiting on approval for grant applications they have submitted to the provincial government and if all goes well as far as funding is concerned, the second phase of the facility could be in place as early as Oct. 2013.
