PANAMA CITY — Firefighters don’t always make it out of fires, but a few abandoned buildings have given fire crews in the county a unique opportunity to train in real-life conditions and prevent those tragedies from happening.
Every wall of the four buildings, formerly the Ninth Street Yard of Bay County transportation operations, had a spray-painted tribute to firefighters lost in the line of duty. The buildings are set for demolition to make way for the new Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) hub.
But for the past three weeks, fire crews throughout the county have had the unique opportunity to use the structures in worst-case-scenario simulations, so “they don’t end up a statistic,” said Capt. Wayne Gilmore of Bay County Fire Control.
“These are the worst conditions possible,” Gilmore said before sending a small group of firefighters into a narrow, debris-strewn building meant to recreate a collapsing structure on fire. “We don’t want to set them up for failure. We want them to fight their way out of a collapsible building.”
More than 120 personnel have cycled through one of the four scenarios nearly everyday since fire crews gained access to the buildings. About 50 firefighters Monday battled tooth and nail through the “confined-space and entanglement” scenario.
Senior officers placed large crates to block doorways, low-hanging obstructions in inopportune locations and cable chords along the floors in the dark corridors of the building,
The other buildings being steadily cycled through by fire crews simulated vent-enter searches, structure fire attacks and mayday training scenarios. Each of them had a common condition of extremely low visibility — only about four inches.
Many of the firefighters have learned the ins and outs of their regular training site, and the repetition can dull their responses to a drill, Gilmore said. With one of the buildings on-site containing about 30 rooms, the lack of familiarity and visibility presented fire crews with real-life problems.
“Guys use their other senses in fires,” Gilmore said. “A lot of them know the feel of every doorway or window frame in our training facilities. This is so new it gives them a chance to train in real-world conditions, working as fast as they can as safely as they can.”
Fire crews also rarely have a chance to bust up a training building like sometimes is required, since people don’t usually unlock their doors and windows before a fire. The buildings are set for demolition at the beginning of September, giving fire crews a few more days of rigorous training.