New firefighter training facility comes to the rescue

Sept. 21--HIGH POINT -- For more than 64 years, the High Point Fire Department used the same mortar and brick tower to train firefighters in a multitude of tasks. The department tore it down last year and were in desperate need of a new one.

The old five-story tower was built in the 1950s. The city condemned the building after it started falling apart, so they tore it down. For the past year, firefighters have been using out-of-district locations, and parking decks downtown, to train. But that just wasn't going to work.

When firefighters train out of district, it can take longer to respond to an incident if a call comes in, said Battalion Chief Tim Wright.

"And we obviously would like to keep our guys in the city of High Point," he said.

Not only is not having a working training facility counterproductive and potentially more dangerous overall, but it creates an insurance issue for the entire city.

The International Organization for Standardization is an insurance organization that sets the proprietary, industrial and commercial standards. Every five years, an inspector comes to the High Point training facility and gives it a rating. Currently, the HPFD stands at a two rating, with one being the best. But if that score goes down, Wright said, it can affect insurance premiums for all homeowners and business owners citywide, causing premiums to skyrocket.

"We're going make sure we maintain that rating, if we can help it," Wright said.

When the city announced the availability of bond money in 2013, fire officials were able to convince the city to approve $750,000 for the new training facility.

The facility is a state-of-the-art, steel construction that includes a five-story tower and a two-story annex with a wooden frame. Along with the new construction, it will have new features that will provide lifelike training situations.

The facility is decked out with a 10-foot underground vault, a new tower construction with a fire escape, tighter inside areas, a repelling cord and a hole for a shingled roof to practice cutting out holes for ventilation during a fire, among other features. New steel boxes fixed with wooden palettes also will find a home beside the tower construction and be used for controlled burns, said Training Chief Damon Tobin.

"It's about making it as realistic, and as safe, as you can," he said.

Towers are not used for controlled burns, and abandoned and donated houses cause complications when it comes to burning them for training, Tobin said.

"There's just a lot of paperwork and a lot of hoops you have to jump through to do a controlled burn in a house," he said.

[email protected] -- 888-3601 -- @HPEemily

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