A facility that firefighters deem crucial for training may soon be unsafe to hold training exercises.
The burn building at the Cambria County Fire School has been a training ground for thousands of firefighters for the past 15 years. So many years of heavy burns has left the building in bad shape and it needs to be repaired soon for the next round of training.
“We have over 100 new firefighters starting out,” said the site’s chairman, John Hawksworth. “They’re gonna need some burn experience and the only way you get that is through our burn building.”
Engineers told Hawksworth the building cannot handle any more heavy burns. Hawksworth said that they hope to be done burning at all in the building by April this year.
The bids will be out this week for burn containers that will be put on the back of the building.
“We’re gonna put metal inside them, make a burn room, and use our original building to move our hose through the building and then attack the fire in the burn containers,” Hawksworth explained.
The burn containers and concrete shoring and patchworks that needs to be done will be expensive.
“We’re probably looking in the neighborhood of $70,000 to $100,000 to add these pods onto the building. So yes, it’s still a money pit for us out here.”
So far, the fire school has raised almost half of their goal. They have about $50,000 to repair the burn building, but other costs are depleting their fund.
“Money’s going,” Hawksworth said. “Right now we’re running heat in the building out here. It’s costing us a lot of money to keep it warm.”
Repairing the building is significantly cheaper than tearing it down and starting from scratch. A brand new building would cost upwards of $500,000.
If the repair work is done soon and done well, engineers told Hawksworth the building could last another ten to 20 years.
Hawksworth said they will keep up their fundraising efforts to make sure the firefighters get the training they need.
“We’re all doin’ it because we want to protect the people of Cambria County in vicinity,” he said.
“The first responders, they need the training,” Cambria County Tom Chernisky said. It’s also not just saving lives, it’s safety on their end.”
