Trail Reports: Fire Academy

Well it has been three weeks now and my training at the North Bend Fire Academy is going well. The program is a 12 week intensive study of fire behaviour, extinguishing techniques, equipment training and use and para-military indoctrination.

It is very overwhelming both mentally and physically.

I am doing well with my studies and the physical training, and the food is great. Pat, our cook, keeps us happy with an amazing menu.

We spend one day a week in the classroom for lecture and testing and the other three days are a mixture of "lab" and firemanship training.

Here we are prepping for a sofa fire scenario in the burn building. The instructors stage the fires to simulate real life allowing us to view the growth and development stages. Here we will be allowing a 20 square foot pallet fire to develop in a corner of "the lab", a 30x50 room in the burn building, so that we can practice knocking it back and controlling the development.

As the fire develops the temperature in the lab increases. the thermal layer at the ceiling begins to drop an we experience 400 degrees at mid wall. The floor is still at around 150 degrees. We learn this type of fire is still very controllable with very little water if applied corr

ectly.

If you look closely a recruit on the right sprays a solid stream of water on the ceiling while the instructor directs his application. The water stream hits the ceiling cooling the upper layer and knocking back the flames. The water that doesn't convert to steam bounces off and lands on the fire seat, at least that is the goal.

Later on we complete an evolution on a smaller"fire box lab" outside on the burn pad. The remaining images are from last week; dragging charged hoses through mazes, spraying at max capacity of 200 gallons per minute, playing with water patterns and then re-entering the lab for a fire twice the size as the previous couch fire.

Thanks for all your love, prayers and support. Keep them coming especially for Cheryl and the boys as I am away from home four days a week. I found my phsical limit in the lab and reached the edge of heat exhaughestion last week. Nothing a little time outside 300 degrees and a lot of water couldn't fix. The training resumes tomorrow with week four. I'll keep ya'll posted with more pictures and stories.