A purposeful and safe house fire proves to be a great learning tool for area firefighters

The Whitecourt and Woodlands County fire departments brought in the heat on Saturday, June 10 as they held an all-day, live-fire training exercise with the home that used to sit beside Canadian Tire along Highway 43. The home was scheduled for demolition and the property owners decided to reach out to the department about the opportunity to use the home as a learning tool.

Starting at 8:30 a.m., the crews utilized the building as much as possible before finally burning it down around 3 p.m. “We practiced evolutions all day and now we’ve been asked by the town and the owner of the property to demolish it by fire. We are doing a controlled burn, trying to get it nice and clean and hot for minimal smoke production and minimal impact to the environment and the residents nearby,” said Deputy Fire Chief Aaron Floyd.

From start to finish, there were over 20 people involved including instructors and firefighters and, thanks to the opportunity, fighters gain indispensable practice time to hone their abilities. “This training will provide our firefighters with the opportunity to demonstrate and practice their skills and education so that we can properly respond to the emergency needs of our community. Department members will have a chance to focus on applying modern fire suppression tactics we cover in training,” explained Floyd.

Purposely burning down a building for educational purposes is a rare event, happening maybe once every seven years, so the opportunity was certainly a great experience all around. “The whole day is fun. Spending the day with a great group and having fun and learning more about what we’re doing and getting better at what we do,” said Floyd.

It took two weeks of planning prior to the match being lit as crews worked to remove things like carpets and shingles, preparing the structure for its demise. “We brought in an instructor, Mark Van Der Feyst who teaches around the world through Firestar Services. We brought him in to learn a little bit more about transitional fire tactics,” said Floyd. 

“I helped facilitate the learning of a tactic called The Transitional Fire Attack (to pull up to a structure that has a self-venting fire, and be able to attack it from the outside first then go in and pull off the rescue of the occupant as well as put it out). Along with the deputies and captain, I was able to show the firefighters what that tactic looks like from the inside as well as from the outside to help them down the road,” said Van Der Feyst.

Mark also added that fuel loads in homes are a lot more than previous years thanks to products such as mattresses, sofas, carpets, and others that are hydrocarbon-based. “We’re facing a much higher energized fire today than say 10 to 15 years ago.”

As for the group, Deputy Floyd said they did a great job. “The group did amazing. We learned a lot about fire behaviour, fire science, and fire dynamics. We took our time and made sure we did it right. There was a lot of learning that happened here today.”