With the recent delivery of a third floor for the burn house, the Wallace District Fire Department has completed the expansion of its training site near Virden’s airport.
A fourth container customized for firefighter training was hoisted on top of the existing floors earlier this month.
Fire Chief Brad Yochim says the extra space “gives us the ability to use our ladders to their full extent and gives us a platform to do some high angle rescue training.”
The new level also includes an apartment type of space at one end to simulate the challenges of fighting a fire in a third floor multi-unit building.
Yochim says this is the last major expansion to the training centre, but there’s one more improvement coming.
“Moving forward, we have to build the confined space rescue prop, which should be done this spring… We have all the items needed in place, we just need a welder to finish it.”
The prop will simulate working in a confined space environment like tanks, silos and vaults, which often contain materials that can suffocate or explode. Firefighters will learn how to rescue victims from the space without endangering themselves.
