Glendale Fire Department and GCC partner for new fire-training facility
For nearly a decade, the Glendale Fire Department has been without a dedicated training facility where either current or prospective firefighters can simulate the high-heat and intense-smoke environments they would encounter during an emergency.
Last week, the Glendale City Council unanimously approved a more than $700,000 project to design and build a Live Fire Modular Training Complex, also known as a “burn building,” for joint use by the city’s fire department and Glendale Community College’s Verdugo Fire Academy.
Glendale-based engineering consultant United Engineering & Construction Inc. was awarded the contract to replace the 60-year-old concrete burn building, decommissioned in 2010, with a new facility constructed with steel shipping containers.
The old facility had gotten so damaged from many years of fire exposure that the concrete and steel reinforcements had started to give way, according to Fire Chief Greg Fish, who joined the Glendale agency in 1987 as a firefighter.
A burn building is a noncombustible structure where combustibles or flammable gases are placed inside to simulate a structure fire.
Fish said burn buildings provide invaluable training for recruits so that when they go into an actual fire, it’s not the first time they’ve experienced severe conditions.
“It’s really important that they gain the success in a safe training environment to learn how to be successful in … that atmosphere,” he said. “We don’t want to do that for the first time in a real fire because people’s lives are at stake.”
For the past several years, local firefighters who have needed first-time, live fire training or annual evaluations have been sent to facilities in the Antelope Valley or the city of Los Angeles.
About $404,000 will come from the city’s previously approved capital-improvement fund, and Glendale Community College officials have agreed to provide $300,000 toward the project.
“This is a perfect partnership, and it is one that continues the work that the Verdugo Fire Academy has had with the city of Glendale Fire as the partner,” said David Viar, the college’s superintendent/president, during the meeting.
Although Glendale has its own academy for new recruits, smaller fire departments, such as those in San Marino and South Pasadena that don’t run recruit academies, rely on state-accredited training programs, such as the one offered at Glendale Community College, according to Fish.
“We don’t have to go over as great of detail in training when we have people who [have] graduated [from the Verdugo Fire Academy],” Fish said.
Design and construction of the fire-training facility will take about six months, according to a staff report. It will be located on the site of the former fire-training facility, 541 Chevy Chase Drive.
Twitter: @JeffLanda
