By Alexis Grant
The Houston Chronicle 
Copyright 2006 The Houston Chronicle Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved

Smoke escaped from the house's every crevice, and firefighters could be heard navigating the inside rooms in their heavy boots, looking for victims.

It was just for practice, but firefighters hope the drill will improve their odds of success when the fire is real and victims are in peril.

It took place in a new house fire structure, part of a recently completed $2 million renovation at the Houston Fire Department's Val Jahnke Training Facility.

The Fire Department will showcase it at a grand opening event today.

Since its completion several months ago, the renovated facility behind Hobby Airport has helped Houston firefighters learn to do their jobs better and has provided a venue where other firefighting units from around Texas and neighboring states can run drills that are nearly identical to real fires.

"This is how you have to train in this business," Engineer/Operator Brian Kimberly said as firefighters in full gear milled around him in the afternoon's 90-degree heat. "You can't train people on a PowerPoint."

The house fire prop is the first of its kind to be used by HFD, although most of the fires battled by the city's firefighters are in single-family homes, Kimberly said. Unlike some of the other structures on the training grounds, the prop, which looks from the outside like a regular one-family house, is not meant to contain fire or even real smoke. Instead, artificial smoke fills the house, while walls — colored black to decrease visibility — create a maze of hallways and rooms that mimic a lived-in home.

Tech-savvy approaches

The structure is used not to help firefighters learn to put out flames, but to help them brush up on search-and-rescue and ventilation techniques. They also practice pulling heavy hoses through the building.

For other skill development, the department has developed more tech-savvy approaches.

Incident commanders work in the facility's new fire simulator, which looks a lot like a movie theater but can be programmed to simulate a fire at any building in Houston.

On a recent day, mock flames engulfed a large restaurant on the big screen, with realism enhanced by smaller monitors that showed the building from various angles and by special effects including artificial smoke and truck horns.

Firefighters, isolated from one another and in some cases only able to see one part of the fire, practiced communications and command skills.

"It's very real to life," Capt. Tony Reed said from the control room.

"You can't tell the difference between this, when it's running, and a real fire."

The simulator, which Kimberly said is the only one of its kind in the country, ate up most of the $2 million spent on renovations. The equipment likely will be moved to a larger building to create even more powerful simulations during the next year, he said.

First built more than 30 years ago and named for former Fire Chief Val Jahnke, the facility now includes a boxcar that serves as a live science experiment; firefighters can learn about fire behavior by watching flames overtake wood inside the car, which is made of a noncombustible material.

Renovations revealed

Other buildings got facelifts during the renovation, mainly additional safety features. Technology installed in the burn building, for example, enables firefighters outside to determine the temperature of each room, and a ventilation system can quickly clear the structure of smoke in an emergency.

Aside from watching firefighters run drills and demonstrations, including how to deal with mass casualties, visitors today can learn to use a fire extinguisher and participate in a two-hour CPR class.