Weather fails to chill West Metro training center opening

A youngster sits behind the wheel of a fire truck at the opening of West Metro's new fire training complex.

LAKEWOOD – Hundreds braved the snow, cold and icy streets to tour West Metro Fire District’s new $15 million training facility Saturday at a Community Day open house.

The 10-acre site at the southwest corner of South Kipling Parkway and West Hampden Avenue, just south of U.S. 285, also house the relocated Fire Station Fire Station 10, which was moved from a nearby location that now will be used for equipment and vehicle storage.

The new training center, the result of 12 yeas of planning and the support of four West Metro fire chiefs, exposes would-be firefighters and their veteran colleagues to the potentially lethal hazards they will encounter on the job, but in a controlled state-of-the-art 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 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.

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.

Saturday’s Community Day included demonstrations of the skills firefighters acquire through training in such realistic conditions. And kids had the chance to climb aboard fire trucks and ambulances, sit in the driver’s seat and enjoy the universal dream of becoming a fire fighter.

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 facility, using the storage bay of the former auto dealership at the site to store heaps of emergency equipment, trailers and trucks as well as space for Task Force personnel.

The service bay was incorporated into the new facilty and is the only remnant of the   former dealership remaining at the site, said West Metro Fire Chief Doug McBee.

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

 West Metro is the largest fire protection special district in Colorado. It serves more than 265,000 residents of its 110-square miles territory, which includes of Lakewood, Morrison and parts of unincorporated Jefferson and Douglas counties.  It is the third largest professional fire agency in Colorado with 15 fire stations, 340 professional firefighters, 59 civilian employees and an annual budget of $67 million.