Fire Academy Trains on Burning Houses

Firefighters set two empty houses in Grimes Canyon ablaze on Monday as a final exam, of sorts, for students from the Ventura County Fire Academy.

“We try to put them in a little more realistic situation,” said Michael LaPlant, chief trainer for the academy, which will graduate 19 firefighters on Thursday. The exercise caps three months of study.

During this practice session, the students had the luxury of time--time to carefully place helmets over fireproof hoods and don breathing apparatus before wading into the fray.

Setting the fires in the first place was as much a challenge as putting them out: without furnishings, the houses tended to smoke rather than burn.

For student Sandy Tapp, the exercise still was thrilling. “It’s all so exciting each time you’re doing it because you don’t know what will happen,” Tapp said.

Inside one burning home, she saw a dramatic illustration of this fact: When she was part of the attack crew--the group that goes inside the building--she watched as a fire from one room zipped through the hallway to the room she was in and shot across about 15 feet of the ceiling.

On the roof of one dilapidated home, students took turns learning how to ventilate the homes to let out smoke and heat.

Any practice you can get helps, student Craig Pearson said.

“The more you train, the more comfortable you feel--the easier it’s going to be down the road,” he said.