FLAME OF KNOWLEDGE
Assistant chief training officer Mike Prangley uses a remote control to simulate a rollover scenario — when super-heated gases collect in a confined space and ignite — at Edmonton Fire Rescue Services’ Poundmaker training facility Thursday.
Mike Prangley presses a button and flames roll across the ceiling of a darkened, concrete room.
Firefighters call the deadly phenomena a rollover — the stage of a structure fire when gases in a room ignite and appear to roll across the ceiling. In the cavernous confines of Edmonton Fire Rescue’s Poundmaker training facility, the rollover lasts just 15 seconds. Then the room is dark again. Most firefighters hope the simulated rollover at Poundmaker is the only kind they’ll encounter in their careers. But if it’s not, they’ll be ready.
At least once a year, each of Edmonton’s 1,100 firefighters goes through Poundmaker for training.
Inside the seven-storey concrete tower at 18711 106A Ave. are propane-fuelled “props” that simulate a variety of firefighting scenarios — from fires in nightclubs to residential high rises to elevator shafts.
Prangley, an assistant chief, calls it “high-risk, low frequency” training.
While dramatic images of firefighters battling blazes loom large in the public imagination, 67 per cent of calls to the Edmonton fire department are medical incidents, followed by alarms-ringing calls. Actual fires are a relatively small percentage of calls.
“If we go to a simple call like a medical aid, there’s no real risk to our firefighters — we go in, we see the patient,” he said. “If we go to a second-alarm fire and it’s burning, we could fall through the floor or anything. That’s high-risk,” he continued.
“Low frequency is we don’t get those very often. We might get 10, 12, second-alarm calls a year.”
The service has been training firefighters at Poundmaker since 2002. It’s one of the largest fire training centres of its kind, Prangley said, with the only comparable facilities located in Texas and Utah.
At first, the fire sources were hay and wooden pallets, which were eventually replaced with ceramic “burn cells,” propane and “fake” water-based smoke. Floor sensors shut off the fire props if the temperature exceeds 500 F.
“It’s not quite as realistic as a real fire, but it’s as close as you can get to add the safety in,” he said. “The heat’s there 100 per cent.”
Prangley said all the training done at Poundmaker has made Edmonton a “very safe” fire department.
An Edmonton firefighter hasn’t died on the job since 1976, when Ralph Hopp and Murray Clark, both 28, were killed while fighting a fire at JJ and Friends Discotheque, 10921 101 St.
“If the building looks like it’s going to go, we’ll not go in,” he said. “If our firefighter goes down while trying to rescue somebody, we’re going to rescue our firefighter. They’re first, that’s just the way it is.”
Prangley said the department hopes to expand the Poundmaker facility to include a “mini-city” with its own firehall and driving course.