CAL FIRE’s Atwater Training Center puts firefighters through live-fire exercises, confidence courses and hands-on structure fire training as they work toward permanent positions and promotions

By Bella Waters Raina Dent
The Modesto Bee

MERCED COUNTY, Calif. — Nicholas Barnes said his career in firefighting began after “getting into a lot of trouble.”

Knowing that his first words were “big red truck,” he said, the occupation was almost fate. He joined a youth program at 14 at the insistence of his mother and has been a firefighter ever since.

Christian Coleman, a seasonal firefighter in Humboldt, had a similar background, dressing up as a firefighter for Halloween for four years straight and landing on the career after trying other jobs.

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Both firefighters, and dozens of others, are hoping to advance their careers at the Cal Fire Atwater Training Center.

“I pretty much begged for it for about a whole season, and then I got sent here, so I’m pretty hype about that,” Coleman said. “I cried, not going to lie, because I’ve been wanting to do this my whole life.”

Located at the former Castle Air Force Base, which was decommissioned in 1995, Cal Fire’s training facility in Atwater is one of four of its kind in the state. It was opened in 2025 in hopes of growing the agency while further aligning training with state and national standards.

“It’s all to give more employees to help serve and protect the resources of California,” said Assistant Chief Sean Bowe, who runs the center.

Currently, Cal Fire employs over 12,000 firefighters. Many of the positions are firefighter 1, or seasonal, meaning they work only six to nine months of the year. Firefighter 2 positions are permanent because they won’t get laid off in the winter.

The center has both firefighter 1 and 2 academies, and all who join are already employed in Cal Fire units across the state. The goal of the academies is to make firefighters permanent and help them get promotions. Bowe said this aligns with the proposed Senate Bill 581, which aims to increase the number of permanent firefighters.

The firefighter 1 academy lasts six weeks, with two additional weeks of testing. The firefighter 2 academy is four weeks long. Cal Fire provides lodging and food near the training grounds.

The firefighters train from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays. Their days consist of physical training, hands-on field experience and time in the classroom. The week of Aug. 17-21 was “burn week,” where firefighters trained with live fire.

In one exercise, firefighters sat in a closed, modified shipping container, started a fire and observed its behavior and smoke patterns. One firefighter said the temperature reached 987 degrees at the ceiling and 780 degrees where they were sitting in their protective gear.

After over 15 minutes, firefighters opened a door on the shipping container and came out. They couldn’t immediately take off their gear and air tanks, though. Touching any of it, including their breathing apparatus, would have burned them. So, they walked around for a couple of minutes to cool off. Air pockets within the gear prevent heat from reaching the skin inside.

When they did take off their gear, many had hair wet with sweat, and perspiration on their faces. The Bee reporters stood about 20 feet away from the container during the exercise, felt the heat and smelled strongly of smoke for the rest of the day.

This was many of the participants’ first experience with intense fire. Coleman, whose career has so far focused on wildland fires rather than structure fires, said the heat gave him new respect for his turnout gear and its capabilities.

“The fire started to slowly creep out above our heads, and then you started feeling really, really hot,” Coleman said. “I come from wildland, so we don’t get that hot over there.”

During the exercise, firefighters watched as the fire lit the gases and smoke in the storage container. Corbin Taylor, another firefighter 1 student who came from Santa Cruz, said the fire looked like the aurora borealis.

“Knowing I was completely safe in that environment, I was in awe just how beautiful I thought it was,” Taylor said.

Firefighters practice with gas-fired car props, forcible-entry doors, a multi-story fire training tower and other burn props. They also go through two confidence courses, where they have to navigate tight, smoke-filled spaces with their full gear. Bowe said these are to make them more comfortable while fighting structure fires.

Other props are made to resemble residential structures, including areas such as bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens. Since many of those in the academy have experience fighting only wildland fires, the props give them the experience of combatting structure fires.

In the academy, remnants of Castle Air Force Base still remain. Decommissioned jets and signage are still visible. Bowe noted that many of the burn props are built within Federal Aviation Administration regulations because the Castle Airport is still functional.

He said the training center will host 17 academies in 2026, and can host up to 40 students per academy.

The Atwater Training Center has plans to expand its on new land and eventually grow from two to three or four academies simultaneously. Bowe said the center is the first in the Central Valley and was established because it has the room to grow.

“What made Atwater so intriguing was our ability to grow — how big our footprint can get,” Bowe said. “With our academy, we have a place to feed them, (and) we have a place to sleep.”

After the academy, firefighters will go back to their units across the state and use the skills they learned on medical calls, wildfire suppression and structure fires. They won’t forget the sense of community, they said.

“Just going from week one to week five now, just seeing how everyone was, kind of, to themselves, had their own cliques, and now we’re all kind of one now,” Coleman said. “Just a giant class where people from every part of the state come to one big cohesive jumble.”

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August 28, 2026 09:55 AM

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