No need to worry, it was intentional.
The dollhouse-size simulator was ignited in the parking lot at RCTC’s Heintz Center as part of a training exercise. The fire moved through the replica like it would in a real home, but the small size gave firefighters an “aerial” view of how air and smoke travel.
It’s just one of the latest teaching tools that Riverland Community College is using to educate firefighters at the annual Minnesota State Fire School. The two-day event, which brought in 370 firefighters from 112 departments in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, is designed to give firefighters hands-on experience and professional development.
“It keeps our firefighters up to date, which, in turn, keeps our communities safe,” said the event’s organizer, Wanda Staska, program manager for Riverland’s Emergency Medical Services & Fire Training Program. “That’s really the biggest thing right there.”
The fire school offered 23 courses and training sessions during the weekend. Many of the classes act as continued education for first responders as things like how homes and cars are built evolve. The course list included auto extrication, “Hoarding Fires: Piles of Danger,” and firefighter cancer awareness.
The auto extrication course keeps the firefighters up-to-date on the latest safety and air bag features included in cars, so that they know how to handle removing someone from a vehicle at the scene of a crash. As the construction of homes has changed, houses often burn faster.
“Things are changing,” said Tim Serpico, a member of the Stacy-Lent Fire Department, a volunteer department in Chisago County. “Things burn three times faster now than they did in the old days — even 15, 20 years ago.”
Staska said the hoarding course provided firefighters with tips for dealing fires at homes whose owners have accumulated piles and piles of stuff.
“That can be really dangerous,” Staska said. “Because with all that stuff in there, that’s fuel for the fire.”
And one of the most important topics of the weekend was cancer awareness, because firefighters are at an increased risk of developing cancer, Staska said. Those health concerns are something that many area departments have raised.
According to a study by the National Institute of Occupational Safety Health completed in 2015, U.S. firefighters have a significantly increased risk of death from cancer compared to the rest of the population.
The course provided firefighters with additional techniques, such as showering immediately after a fire, or cleaning the insides of their trucks, to limit their exposure to carcinogens following a fire.
Bringing all the firefighters together at one location for the weekend also has another benefit, Staska said. They can learn from each other and share their experiences.
“With this many difference departments, it’s kind of nice that they can learn from each other,” Staska said. “It’s different than us just going to the different fire departments and doing monthly trainings … they can share different experiences with each other.”
“That’s really helpful,” she added.
———
©2018 the Post-Bulletin
Visit the Post-Bulletin at www.postbulletin.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
