Fire training facility being built by Goldsboro Fire Department
By John Joyce
Published in News on August 6, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Training Capt. Don Collins of the Goldsboro Fire Department stands in front of the department's new training facility.
The Goldsboro Fire Department has been busy building a facility to train new firefighters. Its first structure is expected to be ready by mid-September.
The new training ground has taken a long time to develop, Chief Gary Whaley said. All the work -- from clearing the land to erecting the first building -- has been done by members of the department.
Capt. Don Collins is leading the construction process.
To commercially build the facility would have cost half a million to three-quarters of a million dollars, officials estimate. The fire department is doing it for less than $50,000.
Collins explained that state regulations used to allow for firefighters to simulate training. But now, actual training must be conducted to qualify firefighters on certain procedures and to do so a training facility is needed.
"If a guy said he had used an ax or he had climbed a ladder, he had been in some smoke training or he had crawled around in a bay, that passed. Now the state has come out with some new (guidelines.) He actually has to be in smoke, he's actually got to use an ax or a saw to cut with or he's actually got to suppress a fire," Collins said.
The answer: Connex boxes -- metal container boxes cut and stacked to form a three story building complete with a 40-foot tower holding a staircase complete with stand-pipes inside. Stand-pipes are like fire hydrants built into buildings -- usually in stairwells or other out of the way areas -- that firefighters can link up to and draw water from inside the building.
"We can burn in it, we can smoke in it, run forced entry, we can cut roofs. We will be able to do anything we want to do in this series of buildings we're going to have out there," he said.
The series of buildings, once complete, will actually be a small city unto itself. Tucked away off U.S. 117 South, behind the night club bearing the same name, is a tract of land. In it, streets are paved around a two-to-three block radius where, for the last three weeks, firefighters on their off time have been busy cutting, stacking, molding, welding and lining the boxes. Once finished, the complex will house "The Apartments," a three-story unit with what will look like apartments, doctor's offices and a rest home.
"Anything the training scenario calls for, we can simulate it in here," Collins said.
A classroom will be built across the lot to allow trainees to move directly from the classroom to hands-on exercises, including scenarios in forced entry, ladder work, stairwell drills, rappelling and lowering drills where a prone victim is lowered from an elevated area to the ground using ropes.
To get this kind of training in the past, firefighters had to travel to Raleigh or other cities where buildings existed for such purposes, Collins said.
The concept for the connex box-structures has been in practice for years, but the Mecca for these types of training facilities is Indianapolis.
Collins, the department's training captain, and another captain spent four days there learning how to build, burn and re-use the connex box-structures.
"These buildings are limited only to your imagination," he said.
Sheet rock and particle board line interior rooms in which bails of hay or pallets will be burned giving trainees a fire to attack and suppress.
"And these boxes are good all year in all seasons. If it rains and it leaks in here, so what. It doesn't matter. We're going to burn it anyway," he said.
When the firefighters aren't burning the interior or repelling off the roof, the Wayne County Firefighter's Association, Wayne Community College fire courses and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office SWAT teams will be invited to make use of the facility. The connex-boxes are conducive to all types of training and within a year, the entire complex -- "The City" -- will be complete.
"If they want to come in here and use it, or the SWAT team, they like to shoot everything up with paint balls, they can. It won't hurt anything. And again, we're just going to burn it," Collins said.