Within the following months, the Farmville Fire Department will work on constructing a burn building within the town of Farmville.
The purpose of a burn building is for live fire training within a simulated environment, allowing a fire fighter to better learn how to react inside a burning building.
The town of Farmville entered in a grant process on July 26, 2013 to fund $430,000 to construct a burn building.
The Burn Building Subcommittee in the Department of Fire and Programs approved the construction of the burn building on Aug. 16, adding to the requested funds to total $480,000 for the burn building.
There is currently no estimated time for the completion of the burn building. The Department of Fire and Programs allows a maximum of one year for the completion of the project, making Aug. 16, 2014 the deadline.
Dean Farmer, assistant chief of the Farmville Fire Department, estimates that the project will be completed within the next six to eight months.
Farmer stated that the interest for the construction of a burn building was to allow closer resources for training.
The town of Farmville, as well as the three bordering counties (Cumberland, Prince Edward and Charlotte), represent a total of 410 volunteer firefighters.
The nearest burn building accessible to the town of Farmville Fire Department volunteers is over 30 miles way, according to the Town of Farmville Burn Building Grant Application.
Farmer noted that the volunteer firefighters had to travel to either Buckingham County or the town of Blackstone.
“Our department would actually have to go out of service for the day to go to those facilities and train,” Farmer said.
Farmer spoke on the construction of the new burn building, saying, “It will assist in many ways. Number one, it keeps our resources within the town, so we don’t have to travel outside of the area to train. It also assists the other departments in Prince Edward County.”
Farmer noted that there are a total of seven fire department within Prince Edward County.
By having the burn building so close, Farmer stated that the fire fighters would not have to go out of service for the day to train.
“It will impact the area as far as being able to host regional trainings here with the Department of Fire and Programs,” Farmer said.
The soon to be constructed burn building in Farmville will be a total of 1,881 square feet with four rooms on the first floor and four rooms on the second floor to represent the standard house the Farmville Fire Department responds to on a daily basis. The building is designated as a Class-B burn building, which is a propane-fired building.
“The benefit to the building is being able to control the smoke [and] also being able to control the heat in the building.”
According to Farmer, it is required for volunteer firefighters to attend a firefighter one class, have two years of being a member of the Department, take state training and enter a burn building a minimum of six times.
When training with burn buildings, the firefighters are not given a time limit to stay within the building, but are instead given one of three tasks to complete: Search and rescue phase, fire attack phase and ventilation phase.
The search and rescue phase entails the fire fighters to perform a search inside the building for potential victims inside the structure.
Thefireattackphaseentailscrew to make entry into the building, locate the fire and extinguish it.
The ventilation phase entails suppressing the fire.
Describing the process to being given a grant to construct the Burn Building, Farmer described it as very competitive. The process involved filling out an application, making an appearance before the Burn Building subcommittee in Richmond, Va. and then making a final presentation to the full Virginia Service Board.
The final presentation was done on Aug. 16.
