Controlled burn turns up the heat
Defence Force firefighters were put through their paces when a twostorey building went up in smoke and the thermometer soared to record levels.
A house on Railway Rd, Palmerston North, was burned to a cinder on Saturday in a training exercise with Fire and Emergency New Zealand.
Training officer Chris Kennedy said the burn was great training for the 20 New Zealand Defence Force firefighters involved.
It was one of the hottest houses they had burnt this year, with temperatures in the ceiling getting to more than 1000 degrees.
Kennedy said this was probably because it was one of the more modern homes they had burnt, so it was a much more real-life scenario.
‘‘Most are normally falling down, but that one there allowed us to show the firefighters going into it what it would be like going into a modern-day house.’’
A few 111 calls were received about the controlled burn.
The house had also been used to film training clips, but they only managed to do half of what they wanted to after some of their gear was stolen from the property.
Clips for public-safety messages were taken during the week leading up to the burn, but they had also planned to film some for internal training, something the thieves’ action put paid to.
‘‘We were meant to film training videos for firefighters to look at what we do when we arrive at a fire.
‘‘The stuff we didn’t get to do was the educational stuff for us to use to train other firefighters up.’’
A defibrillator, first-aid and burns kits, firefighting gloves, torches and hoods were stolen, as well as a hotwater cylinder, airconditioning unit, bathroom vanities and fittings from the house.
Kennedy said, heading into Christmas, they wanted to remind people not to double up multi-plugs and have one appliance per socket. ‘‘Christmas lights - it’s quite common they will double them up and that’s really been the cause of fires.’’
The Railway Rd house was donated to Fire and Emergency NZ for training.
‘‘The stuff we didn’t get to do was the educational stuff for us to use to train other firefighters up.’’ Chris Kennedy, training officer