A controlled fire offered hands-on experience for trainees of Polk County Fire District No. 1 in the evening of Sunday, Nov. 9, drawing attention from locals.

“This is the closest thing that we have to the real deal,” said Lieutenant James Nisbet. “The biggest thing was that we got some of our newer members on the department some good experience from it.”
“We try to notify the neighbors and be friendly and courteous,” said Neal Olson. “We usually send out a letter.”

The hand-delivered letter was delayed until one day prior to the burn this time. “I didn’t put this one in the newspaper because it came on so quick.”

As a precaution, neighboring buildings and plants were thoroughly soaked prior to the first fire being lit just before 4 p.m. Water was continually applied, though everything was already wet thanks to a good rain, which, according to Nisbet, helped.

“They weren’t in a huge, major threat,” Nisbet said of the local buildings, adding of this particular fire, “Really that one wasn’t too concerning.” The structures were distant enough to be protected from the blaze.

“It is real fire, it’s just a little more controlled and regulated.”
A property is also thoroughly evaluated for safety before a burn. Once a structure has been deemed safe, Polk County Fire District No. 1 assumes control of the property, and crews use it for a variety of exercises.

“This is super valuable to people who don’t have a lot of experience,” said Nisbet. This particular property was employed all summer for various training exercises; it couldn’t be lit up because of a burn ban.

“We can use that structure for quite a while ahead of time; there’s lots of things that we train on outside of the actual live fire,” said Olson. “We were probably in that building, doing drills, for probably close to 30 hours over the summer.”

With between 10 and 20 people in each crew, he added, “Thousands of training hours were received by us having that structure, which was really good.”

Practice scenarios include ventilation, forcible entry, and search and rescue among other drills, according to Olson. For ventilation, crews must climb ladders to cut holes in the roof with chainsaws.

Forcible entry is needed when a door must be broken down in order to enter the building or the room. By filling the house with smoke or simulating the collapse of a roof, crews also gain experience with realistic situations.

Everyone on site had a specific job, and a crew to which they were assigned. This is the group they practice with, shifting duties so everyone gets a chance to experience it.

“It’s a real detailed plan as to how we’re going to rotate the crews,” said Olson. “We do all of that training based on national fire protection association guidelines.” He added that he referenced at least 17 pages of material on how to handle every aspect of the controlled burn.

Five fires were planned for the building, in which crews would be able to see how the fire behaved, and gain valuable experience working in realistic conditions. After the fourth lighting, the fire got into the attic. Based on the condition of the attic, this wasn’t a surprise, according to Nisbet.

“Once we got to that point, we just went immediately into free burn,” Olson said. Everyone was ordered out of the building, and firefighters monitored it as they let it burn to the ground.
Nisbet facilitated the lightings, including observing the interior fire conditions while crews rotated through, to make sure the fire stayed contained.

“For the condition of the structure and just kind of time frame, that was more than we were anticipating,” Nisbet said. “We were very happy that we were able to get as many out of it as we did.”

In addition to training individual firefighters and improving their experience, Olson said that the exercises helped to build team cohesion. According to him, the burn also served as a kind of neighborhood cleanup, as the building was not very appealing. “We come away with a lot of training,” Olson said. “Everybody has a place and it’s really detailed.”

Extra vehicles – ambulances and fire trucks – were brought to the scene of the controlled burn. Nearly the entire force on duty was present last night, according to Olson, so if a real call came in, they had to be prepared to mount a response from the field.

“We still have to provide our service to the remainder of the community,” Olson said. This time, he added, they were lucky; “We didn’t have any interruptions.” Other practice burns have been complicated with actual emergencies. “It can be really exciting at times,” he said; with different calls coming in at the same time, there can be a lot going on, which detracts from training.

“A majority of our force are volunteers,” Olson said. On a daily basis, Polk County Fire District No. 1 maintains three full-time firefighters on duty; there are nine career individuals to respond to any incident. The remaining 65 firefighters are volunteers, such as those who received training Sunday.

“If we were able to do it three times a year, that would be great,” said Olson. “We need to have them twice a year,” but he acknowledged, “It doesn’t always work like that.” On average, they are usually able to practice controlled burns once or twice a year.

Spectators gathered to watch the flames for several hours. Rebekah Degner, Nisbet’s girlfriend, watched the fire from a camp chair for over an hour. Other people came and went well into the night, when the fires began to die down.

“You don’t see that every day,” said Elder Lima of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who, after seeing the smoke, stopped by with Elder Goff to make sure everything was alright and if they could help.

Many watchers that night commented that they initially thought that this was an actual fire. After the building had been burned, it was returned to the control of the owner. Olson said that an apartment building with 22 units will be constructed on the property.