Idaho Falls fire recruits prove they can handle the heat
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IDAHO FALLS — Fire crews burned down sections of an empty, donated home Tuesday as part of an Idaho Falls Fire Department training exercise.
The house is scheduled to be demolished in the near future.
EastIdahoNews.com spent the afternoon with the fire department to get a close-up look at how firefighters battle residential blazes.
More than a dozen experienced firefighters and new recruits took part in the exercise. The training began when a fire was set in an upstairs bedroom. Firefighters entered the home and practiced the proper methods of battling flames, searching for victims and how to work together.
“Vernon Steel owns the property, it was donated it to us for training purposes,” Idaho Falls Fire Chief Dave Hanneman told EastIdahoNews.com. “We are gonna use the building as much as we can, until it’s no longer suitable for training.”
Throughout the day, crews set the building on fire multiple times and sent in firefighters to put out the flames. Firefighters used straw pallets in the rooms as accelerants and to mimic burning furniture.
The video above shows the blaze from an aerial drone and from a helmet camera attached to a firefighter.
Hanneman said precautions are taken during the exercise to ensure firefighter safety.
“We have an ignition team that actually starts the fire, an attack team then searches for victims and battles the flames,” he said. “We also have a team on standby should anything go wrong.”
