Live fire training will take place April 25 at one of the three properties on West Center Street that eventually will be removed for the Warsaw Public Works Department building project.
Thursday, Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory Chief Joel Shilling requested permission from the Board of Public Works and Safety to close West Center Street, between Market and Pine streets, from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. (sooner if finished) for the training at 780 W. Center St. The board approved the road closure request 2-0, with member George Clemens absent.
“The intention is to burn for an investigative class one of the houses that was donated by Robinson Construction. We’re not going to burn it all the way to the ground, we’re just setting five different burns inside the home,” he said. “So then our investigators going through a class can come back and investigate those so they can get the skills that they need for their training.”
Shilling acknowledged there are a lot of residents through that area, so the road will stay open to them. “We’ll work with everybody that needs to be,” he stated.
Realistically, he expected that they would be done with the training by 1 or 2 p.m. April 25, and the road closure probably won’t start until the very last minute. There are some safety walk-throughs they have to do first around 8 a.m., so it’s more than likely that’s when the road closure will begin.
Mayor Jeff Grose asked if the residents in the area were warned about the training and road closure.
“Yes,” Shilling stated. “So through the process to be able to burn, IDEM (Indiana Department of Environment Management) had to put out a public notice, and I don’t have the date that they put that out there, but there was a public notice.”
He said IDEM takes care of the public notice as part of issuing the burn permit.
Shilling publicly thanked Robinson Construction again for letting them use the home.
“It’s not very often we get some of these houses to train in. We can go out to our training center all the time and burn in those, and it’s just not as realistic. So, thanks to Dan (Robinson) for allowing us to use those,” he said.
After the meeting, Shilling and Fire Marshal Jeremy Williams further explained the training that will take place April 25-26.
“In coordination with Goshen Fire Department and Indiana Department of Homeland Security District 2, we are doing a fire investigation training, so we have five members in that,” Shilling said.
District 2 includes the counties of St. Joe, Elkhart, Kosciusko, Fulton, Marshall and Starke.
“This course is open to anybody in those counties, and then anybody in the state, but mainly it was just our counties. As part of their fire investigation classes, they have to go investigate fires and they have to be watched by an evaluator. Typically, we do it at our training center and it’s not really realistic. Obviously, there’s different processes we have to go through. With the opportunity to have these homes with Robinson Construction, they have allowed us to do all sorts of training,” Shilling said.
The next step in the West Center Street house is for the fire investigators to complete their skills. There will be 26 students out of District 2 who will be at the training.
“We’re going to burn, potentially, at least five rooms. There’s possibly going to be six, it just depends on what we find out,” he continued.
A burn permit from IDEM is required for any structure that the fire territory gets. As part of that, they’re also allowed to use training props, which are all Class A material like paper and wood. Since it’s a training class, an ignitable liquid will be used for one of the burns.
“So we’re going to set some different fires in a controlled environment. Then these fire investigators have to come out the next day - Saturday, the 26th - and then as part of their class, they will investigate each one of those rooms,” Shilling said. “So it’s great training for us with our department. Our average years of service is about nine for our entire department, so a very young department. So this is great training for them to go and actually go into a live fire where they can go and extinguish the fire.”
He continued, “So it’s really two-sided: It’s training for our people that are actually doing the different burns, and then it’s also training for the investigator class, so it’s kind of dual purpose. So we’re very fortunate to be able to have these houses.”
Williams said April 26 is the final for the Fire Investigator I Class state certification. The class has been held in Goshen, but on April 26 the class will come to Warsaw and do real-life investigations for each of the different types of set fires.
“Warsaw has five of us in this class at Goshen, and I think there’s 15-20 total, but we have five local who are taking it, so it’s pretty cool to get this many people certified at once,” he said.
The class will try to figure out how each of the fires was set, where, if it was accidental or not and by what method.
“So they’re obviously not telling us, being students, how they’re going to start them, but that’s what we’re trying to decide - how each one got started,” Williams said. “Then we go the following Tuesday to class and we have to present our pictures, sample cans and all that kind of stuff, and actually do a presentation like it’s a real-life scenario.”
After that, they’ll take a state skills test of about 100 questions. If they pass all the testing, then they’ll be a Fire Investigator I certified with the state of Indiana. Once they have the certification, they have it for good, but every two years they have to have 16 hours of in-service continuing education.
The last time the fire territory got to burn a house was in 2018.
Safety is the main priority for the training, for the firefighters and the residents, which is why the road closure was requested.
“It’s all controlled, so as far as the fires, basically, we have a team that goes in. We light it. Then once it gets to a certain point where we feel (the fire) is going enough that the guys are going to have to use their skills, they’ll stretch a line in and then extinguish it like we would any other fire,” Shilling explained.
The eventual plan is to possibly burn all three houses down on West Center Street at a later date, but currently they only have a burn permit from IDEM for the 780 W. Center house. After the training on April 25-26, Shilling said the home will still be standing.
“You shouldn’t be able to tell other than the roofing material has to be pulled off because we’re not able to burn asphalt shingles and stuff. The vinyl siding has to be pulled off, so you will see the house look almost barren and wooden because we’re not allowed to burn those materials, other than the woods and combustibles,” Shilling said.