Firefighters are typically the ones responsible for putting out a house fire — not starting it.
But on Saturday, career and volunteer firefighters with Lewis County Fire District 6 and the Chehalis Fire Department had the rare chance to do both.
A local landowner recently donated an empty house in the 2500 block of Jackson Highway to District 6 for training purposes. After conducting skills training exercises in the house for the last two months, firefighters carefully set the house on fire Saturday morning so they could practice their skills in real fire conditions.
“We're in the business of saving lives and property, and we don't … get opportunities like we had today very often to train with a live burn,” said Lewis County Fire District 6 Commissioner Calin Mason on Saturday. “This is a perishable skill job. We can only train so much in the classroom and pulling hose in the back of the station and going into static locations to simulate fire. So today was a unique opportunity that was given to us by a local resident who graciously donated this home for us to train him for the last two months, as well as do this live burn today.”
Saturday’s training began with controlled burns inside the house so the 27 participating firefighters — both paid staff and volunteers — could rotate through and run a variety of drills.
Crews ran through firefighter-down drills, practiced ventilation tactics to control heat and smoke and practiced a technique called VEIS: an acronym for ventilate, enter, isolate and search that guides firefighters on what to do when they first encounter a fire.
“40 years doing this, and I learned stuff,” Mason said. “It’s great because it allowed paid guys, volunteers and even people like the chief and myself to learn new stuff.”
For Lewis County Fire District 6 volunteer coordinator Dave Layden, the drills gave him a new perspective on what kids see when firefighters come to the rescue.
“All you can see (through the smoke) is these flashlights pointing, maybe a mask … I looked at the guys and I said, ‘Well hell, if I saw that coming at me too and I was a kid, I'd run away too,” he said. “I've been doing this for six years now and it gave me a completely different perspective of what kids see.”
The controlled burns also demonstrated fire concepts that firefighters are taught in the classroom but don’t frequently get to see, like why it’s better to stay low to the ground in a smoke-filled room.
“When you see the smoke from the inside the room and it's settled, and you're down below, you stay alive. When you come up, you understand why you don't come up and how quickly you can go out. So these were a lot of things that the average person that’s volunteering, especially, doesn't get to see. So we were able to create those conditions in the house,” Layden said.
Once everyone had the chance to run drills in the house on Saturday, a couple firefighters went upstairs and set the house on fire with the goal of having it collapse in on itself.
“And then we kind of judge ourselves on our abilities because if you can set a good fire, you can put it out,” Layden said.
“You have to know how to fight fire and the way to do that is, how do you start it?” said Mason.
The house collapsed exactly as planned — with the exception of one wall, which collapsed outwards instead of inwards.
“But we were prepared,” said Layden.
While volunteer firefighters are unpaid and take shifts on a rotating roster, volunteer firefighters are held to the same training standards as paid career firefighters.
“It's really important to understand that the guys that leave out here as volunteers are just as just as proficient as any career firefighter,” said Layden.
For more information on volunteering with Lewis County Fire District 6, visit lcfd6.org or contact Layden at dlayden@lcfd6.org.
