House Fire Part 1

As part of the Fire Academy training, the school was able to obtain an old house and garage that was going to be demolished and use it to practice putting out structure fires.

First and foremost is Safety! Plenty of backup and water supply. There were no hydrants in the area so water was trucked in with a Water Tender. One engine would be enough, but there was another engine on standby. And they used lots of hose. I was wearing the same "turnout" gear that the rest of the firefighters were wearing to protect me from the heat and such. These are just a few of over 280 pictures that I took to try and capture their story.





This is the house and garage that soon will be gone up in smoke.



They practiced ventilating a roof.



A fire was set in each of the small rooms one at a time in the house and each squad had a turn at entering the house with a hose line and checking for people and then putting out the fire. They had to put out the fire quickly so as not catch the whole house on fire. They even practiced extracting a "downed fireman" from a burning building.





After putting out fires in the small rooms, they torched the garage.



Now they had an exercise in Exposure Protection. In other words keep the house from catching fire from all the heat from the garage fire.



This is just the first part of a three part series that is needed to tell the story. While the garage was going up, they posed for a Class Picture.