Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Rookie firefighters take part in training exercise

Firefighter training

Heather Cory

Rookie firefighter, Aaron Rupp, puts his helmet in place to get ready to enter one of two burning homes on Gilespie Road on Tuesday. The Clark County Fire Department burned two homes as part of a training exercise before the class graduates on Nov. 21.

In the heat of things

On her 19th week of firefighting training, Michelle Higgs pulls a fire hose to a fire hydrant as the Clark County Fire Department burn two homes on Gilespie Road as part of a training exercise on Tuesday. Launch slideshow »

With dark smoke drifting out of holes in the roof of two dilapidated homes, trainees in the rookie class of the Clark County Fire Department prepared Tuesday to tackle the first flames they've encountered outside of their training building.

"Yes sirs" could be frequently heard as the rookies readied the hoses that snaked around the five fire engines parked in a two-home cul-de-sac off of Gilespie Street just north of Warm Springs Road.

The activities for the 23 trainees included making their way through thick smoke to rescue a uniform-clad dummy and dousing fires set in different bedrooms of the cul-de-sac's two residences, which are both set to be demolished.

The houses however, were not the fuel for the flames. Wood pallets were placed in the bedrooms to serve as the combustible material.

"The goal is to keep it confined to the pallets," said Deputy Fire Chief Al Osborne. "Once it gets to the building, it takes considerably more effort to get the fire out and that's really not what we're looking at at this point."

While the drill wasn't exactly true to life in that precautions were taken to keep the houses themselves from catching on fire, the smoke and flames provided valuable experience to the trainees.

Rookie school instructor Nels Eastgard said the importance of the training burn can't be understated.

"We have a really nice burn tower at the training facility," he said. "But the reality is as much as we change it up, we can only do so much before they get used to the layout."

As he prepared for the exercise, Silverado resident and rookie Stephen Cambeiro said that not knowing the layout of the structures would make things a little more difficult and would cause him and the trainees to rely more on everything they've learned during the 19 previous weeks of their 21-week training.

"It's going to be very challenging. All the training we've learned up to date will be put to the test today — everything we've learned so far," he said.

To keep everyone involved safe, veteran firefighters were briefed on all of the details of the exercise and assigned to take posts in different areas of the homes to keep an eye on things.

"The plan is to keep everything in check in the room of origin," Capt. Steve Petcoff said to the group of veterans

"What we want to avoid today is burning these things down," he said.

Batallion Chief Ken Morgan warned the group.

"If you hear 'Mayday!' it's a real situation," he said.

Four burns were planned for each home and each team of rookies was assigned a search and rescue and ordered to extinguish a fire.

"It's as close to the real deal as we can get," Osborne said.

Ashley Livingston can be reached at 990-8925 or [email protected].

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