‘Mysterious’ structure an eye-opener
Stack of shipping containers goes up to give firefighters training experience
A building under construction this summer in Country Club Hills has caused plenty of area residents and motorists to pull over, take photos and scratch their heads, wondering if what they were seeing is the latest in ecofriendly home construction.
On 175th Street just east of Cicero Avenue, eight steel shipping containers have been stacked like a Lego project, complete with doors and windows cut into the walls. The front of the two-story structure features a covered front porch with wooden pillars and a poured-concrete floor. There’s even a peaked roof made of fresh timber jutting into the sky over one of the containers, a detail visible from Interstate 80.
“Every day, people pull in here. They take pictures and ask what it is,” said Bob Kopec, deputy chief of the Country Club Hills Fire Department, which is headquartered next door. “One guy even said, ‘I’d like a house built like this!’”
The 3,300-square-foot house made from recycled shipping containers is a fire training tower built by the city of Country Club Hills. Over the past decade, these structures have popped up in Posen, Frankfort, Plainfield and other communities as an alternative to the often prohibitively expensive brick-and-mortar training towers that can cost $350,000 to build and are expensive to maintain.
While towers in other areas tend to look like stacks of steel boxes, the Country Club Hills structure sports charming architectural details.
But thanks to donated materials and labor, the price tag was about $50,000, a way to save money while giving firefighters and other first responders a chance to practice their skills in a setting that mimics a typical splitlevel suburban house.
Designed by Kopec, the layout includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a
“Every day, people pull in here. They take pictures and ask what it is.”
mud room, utility room and an attached one-car garage.
Plans call for two more shipping containers to be welded on vertically, which the city’s fire officials said will enable them to train for incidents at “high rise” properties, which includes anything over three stories.
“This is all about trying to re-create the most realistic situation we can in training,” Kopec said.
Fire Chief Roger Agpawa agreed. “The mistakes are going to made here. That’s what makes us better and stronger,” he said.
Eager to get it built, Country Club Hills firefighters volunteered their own time and construction expertise. The city’s public works and building departments’ staff pitched in. And several local businesses donated materials and the use of equipment. As it came together, Kopec got the idea to “bump out” the living room, giving it an L-shape, and add a peaked roof over it that created an attic space above. When they needed to stabilize it with steel I-beams and concrete footings, he realized it was a chance to put a front porch on as well. Adding the two wooden roofs would do more than give it a homier look,it would enable them to add a removable panel about six feet square to each roof that firefighters can rip open during each training exercise, then easily replace afterward.
“It’s one thing to practice on flat ground,” Kopec said. “It’s another to do it 18 feet in the air on a pitched roof.”
The doors and windows are made of steel but with realistic detail. Windows will be installed on hinges so firefighters can open them to get in or to get out “victims” —150-lb. dummies placed inside by training officers. The doors are attached to a steel frame that can be bolted on the inside by several wooden blocks. Known as “the Humbler,” the door-and-frame device was designed and built by South Suburban Welding & Fabrication in Posen and has become a favorite training tool for firefighters practicing forced entry.
While the interior won’t have finished walls or floors, it will include donated furniture emergency workers will have to navigate during practice drills. “The biggest thing you want to simulate is smoke and heat,” said training officer Jeff Cook.
But the fire itself won’t rage through the structure. One of the rear containers will be loaded with wooden pallets and hay and set aflame. The resulting smoke and heat will escape through vents into the structure, with temperatures expected to rise to about 600 degrees. Firefighters will be able to open a steel hatch in the container’s roof to practice putting out the blaze.
They also will practice working as a company, handling hoses, putting up ladders, parking fire trucks, even turning off the gas on a meter to be installed on the back of the structure, among other skills. In other training exercises, paramedics can practice moving patients who use a wheelchair down the two steel staircases (one inside, one outside). Police officers will be allowed to use it for training as well.
Other fire departments that will train at the Country Club Hills facility are those from the city’s autoaid community, including Homewood, Flossmoor, Olympia Fields, Oak Forest and Hazel Crest. Mandatory “live fire” training is required annually for Illinois firefighters, but having a training tower close by will probably mean the Country Club Hills department will practice on real fires more often, Cook said.
“We want to get in there,” he said. “The guys are really excited.”
Given that the building is adjacent to I-80, training will only take place when there is no wind from the south, which could cause the fire’s white smoke to drift over the interstate and potentially cause gapers’ block. “We had to follow the guidelines” from state agencies, including the Illinois Department of Transportation and Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Kopec said.
Construction should be complete by early October. A coat of paint will be added to match the color of Fire Station No. 14, which is next door at 4520 W. 175th St. An open house is being planned and a good-sized crowd is expected, given the level of interest the community has shown.
And of course the firefighters are eager to explain to the public why it’s such an asset to the city.
“It’s important to get back to the basics,” said Assistant Chief Michelle Hullinger.
Engineer Ray Rodriguez echoed the thought. “We train for the worst.”