A few days of special firefighter training in Danville began Tuesday (Dec 16th) in the melting snow around the intersection of Chandler and Grant Streets. Soda City Training out of South Carolina is in town, training Danville firefighters in exchange for the use of some houses, scheduled to be torn down, for the training. In addition, about 18 out of town firefighters came for the training. And Danville’s Captain Ryan Allison explained the main thing they’re working on.
AUDIO: Really, this week is about vertical ventilation; teaching guys how to get comfortable working on roofs. We go up to the roof to cut a hole, to let the heat and the smoke out. So that way, if there’s potentially a victim that’s trapped inside, it makes the conditions inside better for them. We’re essentially making a chimney, where maybe there’s not a chimney present.
Jason Joannides from Soda City Training says they’ve been all over the last couple of years, training in all kinds of weather.
AUDIO: We’ve been as far as the Pacific Northwest, Seattle area as well. We were doing a class in the end of July this past year; actually in Columbia, South Carolina. And it was 140 on the roof. So we figured this year we’d hit both spectrums, 0 to 140.
Captain Allison reminded us that come Thursday (Dec 18th), it will be a different set up on North Jackson Street. The Champaign Fire Academy will be doing the training, with trainees from all around battling flames for the first time.
AUDIO: Brand new recruits that have never been on the line yet are being assigned to come in. They’ll put out the fire. They (the trainers) will reset it, another evolution with some more candidates through it. And at the end of the day, we’ll burn the house down.
That scheduled to be torn down structure being used for training is at 1008 North Jackson.
