Belmont College unveils live burn building
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ST. CLAIRSVILLE -- Belmont College unveiled its new live burn building and hosted a demonstration on Wednesday.
The building will help college students and local first responders get firsthand experience and training.
Several local fire departments and law enforcement officers attended the unveiling and assisted with the demonstration.
According to a press release from Belmont College, "This facility will provide students with live fire training for structure fires, flammable gas, and flammable liquids. Additionally, it will be used for confined space instruction, search and rescue operations and rope rescue education. The building can also be used for forcible entry and tactical entry training with local law enforcement."
Julie Keck, director of marketing and strategic communications at Belmont College, said the building has already been used by local law enforcement for SWAT training and K-9 training. Wednesday was the first time that the building was set on fire.
Ailsa Vogelsang, director of the fire and EMS department at Belmont College, said she has been pushing for the project since she started working at the college in 2009.
"It's been a long time coming," she said.
She said the project was funded through grants and support from the Belmont College Foundation and from local law enforcement.
"Of course the main attraction is that you can light it on fire, but you can also rappel in there. There are search and rescue things in there. You can run EMS calls and scenarios in there, so there's a lot of different uses for the building, all hands-on training to kind of get to the real world stuff before they actually get there," Vogelsang said.
She explained that the interior walls can easily be moved by sliding them or swinging them into a different position. She said that by moving the walls, the building can be made to resemble the layout of a business, apartment building or single-family home.
"You can change the situation and change the scenario," she said.
Vogelsang said the moveable walls also mean that trainees do not know the layout of the building or what to expect when entering. She said this is good training and experience for the real world.
Vogelsang said the fire and EMS program at the college typically has 50 to 100 students, but in the past, the department has had as few as 20 students or as many as 500.
"It goes up and down, but generally, for the area and for the sized school we are, we have quite a few (students)," she said.
She said the department has been smaller in recent years, but she hopes the burn building will draw more students to the program.
Vogelsang said the facility will be available for local first responders to use as well. She said that a permanent schedule is still in the works that will determine when students have use of the facility and when first responders can have training sessions there.
"We're hoping to get a lot of use out of it," she said.
Lafferty Fire Capt. Jared Greenwood gave a tour of the inside of the building on Wednesday.
"It's more than just fire. We're opening this up to all public safety," he said.
Greenwood said the structure has mostly been used by the sheriff's office and pointed out the BB gun pellets scattered throughout the building.
The inside walls and stairways are all steel so that the structure is not destroyed during fire training.
Greenwood said the building is three stories high and has designated burn rooms on the first and second floors. He said the burn rooms are reinforced for safety purposes and have wood piles or wooden structures inside to light on fire. Greenwood said wooden skids and straw are used to build up the fires.
He said he hopes that the burn building will help students and trainees learn to stay calm during a fire in another setting.
"It's probably one of the most scariest things. You can't see. It's hot, so the more training we can get them, the calmer they can be," he said.
Cumberland Trail Fire Capt. Curtis Kyer discussed how more recent technology has made fires more frequent and violent. He said phone chargers are considered extension cords and should not be left plugged in when not in use. He also said that lithium batteries found in laptops and other electronics can cause issues. Kyer said people also have more plastics in their homes, and these plastics can burn quickly and spread a fire.
According to a press release from Belmont College, "Recent Ohio rule changes requiring National Fire Protection Association safety regulated and inspected burn buildings have left a vacuum for this type of training in our region. Currently, there are very few approved burn building structures within a 10-county radius of Belmont County, which places an undue burden of travel time and expenses on students."
The structure was approved by the Ohio Division of EMS, Office of Fire Services on Sept. 18.
The live burn building is located directly behind the Belmont College Mechanical Technical Center at 68633 Bannock Road, St. Clairsville. The release from Belmont College states that the college has been a chartered fire school for almost 30 years.