By Amanda Estes
Staff Writer
For a firefighter, there’s no better training than battling a live fire, but it’s not every day that a fire department is given an unoccupied building to destroy, said South Portland Fire Department Lt. Rob Couture.
But last week, the department’s four new hires were given that opportunity when they participated in a live fire training session in the Waterman Drive building that previously housed Beale Street Barbeque. The restaurant has since moved to the Thomas Room building on Broadway and it’s former shell will eventually be torn down to make way for a four-story office building.
Couture said real estate broker Andrew Ingalls, who is developing the Fore River Office Park on the site, donated the building to the department, enabling the new firefighters to practice forceable entry, wall breaching and extinguishing a fire.
“We used to think there were tax breaks involved, but there really aren’t,” Ingalls said of donating the building.
The department’s use of the building will mean there will be less to tear down later, Ingalls said.
The former eatery is one of three structures donated to the department in roughly the last two years, Couture said. In the absence of an unoccupied building, the rookies train in a three-story building behind central station on Broadway. A new location, however, presents challenges a firefighter will likely face when responding to a real call.
“When they’re actually in there, they have to know where the exits are,” Couture said. “Obviously live fire training is contained to a point, but it’s still a fire in a building.”
The live fire training setup is similar to the setup for a real house fire, Couture said.
Because the building so closely abuts a residential neighborhood, “the idea truly is not to burn the building down,” Couture said.
“If somebody calls and complains about smoke, we shut down,” he said.
At the scene last week, sheets of insulation and pieces of wood were strewn all over what was the restaurant’s dining room floor. Gaping holes in the sheet rock and the rudimentary outline of a booth were still standing in one corner of the room.
A length of hose ran to the building from a hydrant located down the street and there was also a backup line. An ambulance and safety officer were also at the scene.
Before one of the senior firefighters ignited the wood pallets and hay bales stacked in the kitchen, the rookies and their instructors gathered in the dining room for a briefing from Lt. Jim Wilson. The two teams consisting of rookies and instructors entered the kitchen one at a time. In the event of an unexpected circumstance requiring firefighters to evacuate the building, they listened for a call over their radios and the air horns on the trucks outside, Wilson said.
Upon entering the room, the rookies first observed the smoke and heat and then aimed a quick blast of water at the ceiling, where a layer of hot gas had developed.
“The building’s really open,” Wilson said to the teams. “There are no real voids for us to worry about. Hopefully we’ll keep my record intact of not getting anybody hurt.”
Wilson knocked his fist on a scrap of wood and then the teams went off to finish their preparations.
Lori Jones joined the department in December and responded to a fire in the beginning of January. A volunteer firefighter since she was 15-years-old, Jones has completed Firefighter 1 training and she is also a paramedic.
“I think by having a fire in the city before having the training, you could see how South Portland does it,” Jones said.
After the fire was ignited and the kitchen’s exits sealed to trap the heat, dark gray smoke spilled out from the building’s main entrance and from the cracks between the roof and the walls.
Observing the smoke, Lt. Stephen Fox said it is a common misconception, perpetuated by movies and television, that firefighters can actually see when they’re inside a burning building.
The color of the smoke is an indicator of the firefighters’ progress, Fox said. As the smoke changes color from ashy gray to white, Fox said, “That means they’re hitting it.”