West Metro ready to unveil new fire training center

Construction crews put the final touches on West Metro's new fire training center.

LAKEWOOD – West Metro Fire District has a smokin’ hot new training facility, the result of 12 years of planning, the support of four West Metro fire chiefs and $15million in voter-approved bond money.

The 10-acre site at the southwest corner of South Kipling Parkway and West Hampden Avenue, just south of U.S. 285, would pass as a sort of Disneyland for firefighters except for its very serious purpose, exposing would-be firefighters to the potentially lethal hazards they will encounter on the job, but in a controlled environment.

“Twelve years ago we started looking around, studying other training centers around the country” said Cindy Matthews, West Metro spokeswoman. “We’ve had lots of time to research and study and hire experts from around the country to help us make the most of that very limited space.”

The district will unveil the new training center at a Community Day open house Saturday, Oct. 10 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The money for the center came from a $43 million bond issue approved by voters in 2007. Those bonds also financed five new fire stations and significant upgrades or repairs at others.

Until now, West Metro has relied on the aging Metro Fire Training Center at Santa Fe Drive and Chenango Street, sharing the facility with three other departments. That center, built more than 20 years ago, was designed to train about 40 firefighters in each trainee class.

“In its heyday it was training hundreds. It was way too small,” and, because of encroaching development in that area, there were no remaining options for expanding the Metro Fire center, Matthews said.

Not only was the former center old and inadequate, it required fire fighters and their emergency vehicles to travel 30 or 40 miles away from their duty posts.

The new site is virtually at dead-center of West Metro’s territory.

“If we have a big incident, we can pull any of our crews that are training and send them there. Before, we were not able to do that,” Matthews said.

And the new center provides a number of training features the district was not able to simulate at the former training site.

The training tower, which looms over the new Fire Station 10, offers a new training venue on each of its four sides, from a high-rise apartment façade on one side to a building-ledge high angle rescue scenario on another. The tower’s interior can be changed to mimic the inside of an office building or an apartment bedroom.

Fire Station 10 was relocated from a nearby location, which now will be used for equipment and vehicle storage.

On the north end of the site, a “collapsed building” scenario strewn with slabs of concrete sends rescue crews and their dogs over and through rubble for search-and-rescue training.

“We can now do training like for the San Francisco bridge collapse or a building collapsed in a pancake fashion like 9-11,” Matthews said. “We can go in and actually cut concrete, cut metal, shore things up, search for victims,” Matthews said.

Underground, a series of concrete tubes and vaults offers training in close-quarter work, training that allows firefighters to use their wits and self-control before being faced with the same task in a life-or-death situation.

“The walls undulate, which simulates the way dirt would fall, so it’s not like a straight concrete wall,” Matthews said. “The smallest pipe is 18 inches. Our fire fighters pull gear with air packs through that. The big guys have a hard time, but they make it through.” Matthews said.

On the southeast corner of the site, a 280,000-gallon retention pond collects water used for training from the entire site, then recycles it for other training exercises including how to pump water from the pond, then transport it to the site of a fire. The pond also provides water pumped from the fire hydrants around the training site.

Next month’s Community Day will include demonstrations of the skills fire fighters acquire through training in such realistic conditions. Visitors can watch first responders rappel down a wall, view a simulated high-angle rescue, technical rescues from a trench, search and rescue crews and their dogs working through rubble and more.

The new facility also will house the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Colorado Task Force, which is sponsored by West Metro. The Task Force, one of 28 in the nation, will set up shop at the new facility, using it for storing equipment, trailers and trucks as well as space for Task Force personnel.

And other fire and rescue departments can arrange to use the facility to train and update their fire fighters, Matthews said.

Next month’s Open House will be free, but the district urges people planning to attend on Community Day to call  (303) 989-4327, ext. 543, so planners will know how many folks to expect.