By Sean Dolan
The Times-News
TWIN FALLS, Idaho — The battalion chief circled the smoking building to get a 360-degree view and then radioed dispatch to report a four-story, multi-family residential structure fire.
Luckily, it wasn’t a real emergency.
The Twin Falls Fire Department on Monday opened the Jim Bieri Regional Fire Training Center with a live demonstration of suppressing a simulated fire at the Drager Training Tower with the help of Ladder One.
The facility will help train firefighters, police and EMTs from around southern Idaho, Twin Falls Fire Chief Les Kenworthy said. The vision is to provide a space for regional cooperation among multiple agencies.
“The more you train together, the more you work better when it’s the real thing,” Kenworthy told the Times-News.
Having a dedicated training facility is huge, he said, and will help speed up response time during emergencies to reduce property loss and loss of life.
“Training is so critical in doing what we do, because speed is everything,” Kenworthy said.
Before the training facility opened, Twin Falls firefighters had to either wait until a building was going to be demolished or contact local businesses to find structures to train on, Captain Jesse Bowman told the Times-New .
“We had to beg, borrow and plead to get into different places to be able to train out there,” Bowman said. “So this is a game changer.”
Emergency responders will use the multi-story training facility to simulate residential and commercial fires, practice pumping scenarios and even repel off the building to train for rope exercises, Bowman said.
Mayor Ruth Pierce spoke at the dedication ceremony on Monday and said the new facility is the result of a partnership with several agencies.
The city donated land, Twin Falls Rural Fire District provided some of the funding and the state provided grants for the project.
“This center greatly benefits the region’s fire response by allowing firefighters — both full-time and volunteers — to train together as collective groups to strengthen fire fighting in our communities,” Pierce said in her remarks.
The project has spanned multiple years with several changes, according to Mandi Thompson, assistant to the city manager. The total construction investment is over $4.5 million with another $400,000 for design and engineering.
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