Vacaville firefighters rotated through controlled burns at “Train Town,” simulating real fires to build experience and maintain readiness, especially for newer firefighters

By Nick McConnell
The Reporter

VACAVILLE, Calif. — The Vacaville Fire Department will host three days of live fire training at Fire Station 73 this week, training on five controlled burns on Wednesday to keep their staff sharp and in firefighting shape.

Public Information Officer Brian Jewell said the facility, known as Train Town, simulates both a single-family home and a small apartment complex and replicates a live, spontaneous fire as closely as possible in terms of heat, flame, and smoke. The department places burn barrels full of wood and hay throughout the structure to create smoke and lights multiple fires in different parts of the training structure to be extinguished. The structure reaches from 800 to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit inside during the drill.

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“Fortunately, in the city of Vacaville, we don’t have that many structure fires,” Jewell said. “So if we wait to practice our profession on the structure fire itself, you may go three or four or five months without a real structure fire. By doing these practice burns, it is in a controlled environment.”

Crews survey the fire scene, complete with non-flammable furniture and practice dummies, then make any necessary rescues and extinguish the blaze, Jewell said. All of the units on duty on Wednesday for the department planned to participate in training throughout the day, he said, cycling through one at a time to maintain a safe level of service. Crews, including ones from other departments, learn to work together during the drills.

“We are going in for a targeted search for a rescue. We are breaching the doors. We are going in, and we are dragging a hoseline through a furnished structure,” he said. “Those are all things that if you don’t get to do on a recurring basis, those are the things that are perishable skills.”

Jewell said that the training structure was built organically by the department to meet its own needs, closely mirroring Vacaville’s housing stock to optimally simulate a real fire.

“About 98 percent of the work that has been done out here on these training grounds is all firefighter-led. The welding, the cutting, the painting, all of the interior of the buildings have all been built by Vacaville Fire Department firefighters,” he said.

Currently staring down considerable overtime costs and a city budget in peril, it can be difficult for the department to pull crews out of service to keep up on training, Jewell and Fire Chief Frank Drayton said. Vacaville cross-trains all of its firefighters, which is unique in the region.

“We are dual role, so our firefighter/paramedics and firefighter/EMTs are also on the ambulance,” Jewell said. “We are the only department in Solano County that has dual-role ambulances.”

Drayton said these trainings are particularly important, even as staffing continues to be an issue, because so many firefighters for the department are new to the field.

“We have such a young workforce that they need to see what a real environment would be like,” he said. “The last thing I want them to do is find out what a house fire looks like for the first time that is not in a training environment.”

Drayton said he does not think the community fully understands and appreciates the full level of service that his department offers to the community.

“Having our own ambulance service, having the staffing that we do, we provide an awesome level of service, and sometimes they just may not see that because very few call 911,” he said. “So the general population doesn’t really see that, but the ones that do rely on us, they do.”

When was your most recent live fire or acquired structure training, and what were its focus and objectives?

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