By Jason Emerson
Editor
Cazenovia firefighters have had a rare opportunity in recent weeks to practice their firefighting skills on purposefully torched houses on Route 173 in the Chittenango Fire District. Firefighters have been able to break through locked doors, axe their way through walls and cut holes in roofs to help hone their skills — things that can’t be done in a training facility.
“This is probably some of the best training we can do as a fire department,” said Cazenovia Fire Chief Don Arnold. “It’s real world — it’s a couch burning in the corner of a room and starts the rest of the place on fire; you can’t simulate something like that in training.”
The training opportunity came at the invitation of the Chittenango Fire Department, which recently had donated to it four old farmhouses on the former Gates Farm property between Cheese Factory Road and the Madison-Onondaga county line. The farm recently sold and the new owner, who wanted to demolish the old houses, offered them to the fire department for training.
The Chittenango Fire Department, along with Cazenovia and North Chittenango departments, have been burning the houses one at a time and using them for interior and exterior firefighting practice. So far, two of the four houses have been burned and trained on — over a total of four days (about 20 hours), said Arnold.
Typical firefighting training structures are made of concrete or metal, which burn differently than wood and, as training modules, full water pressure cannot be brought to bear for fear of permanently destroying the facility, Arnold said. On these true house fires, firefighters have been able to practice forcible entries, breaching interior walls, clearing windows, cutting holes in roofs and using full-bore water spraying techniques.
“There’s a tremendous amount of training we can do with acquired structures,” Arnold said. “This is thanks to the Chittenango Fire Department which invited us to train with them.”
Chittenango Fire Chief Jeff Geer was unavailable for comment prior to press time.
So far, about 40 Cazenovia firefighters — about 85 percent of active members — have been able to participate in the live fire training, Arnold said.
The final two donates houses are scheduled for burn training in upcoming weeks, and Cazenovia firefighters will be active in those practice sessions as well, Arnold said.
