By Melissa Frick
mlive.com
KENTWOOD, Mich. – The Kentwood Fire Department is getting a new facility where firefighters can get hands-on training on how to respond during a live fire, conduct search and rescue drills and more.
The department has purchased a $668,235 First Responder Training Facility, a pre-structured container system designed specifically for live fire training. The multi-story unit will be outfitted with burn rooms, a maze system, a temperature monitoring system, a forced entry door and more.
The new facility will give first responders a controlled but realistic environment where they can conduct training exercises that will prepare them for dangerous real-life scenarios, like rescuing themselves during a flashover or cutting through a roof to rescue victims in a house fire, Fire Chief Brent Looman said.
“If you don’t get proficient at it, you might not do as well as you could on a fire scene,” he said. “So to have a facility that we can train at regularly, it’ll make our people much more proficient.”
Kentwood is purchasing the new training facility from Fire Training Structures, a Long Island, New York -based company that builds custom fire training structures.
The Kentwood City Commission approved the $668,235 purchase at its Dec. 17 meeting. It is being funded in part by a public safety millage increase that was passed by Kentwood voters last spring, Looman said.
The Kentwood Fire Department doesn’t have its own live training facility and previously relied on Grand Rapids Fire Department facilities that are no longer operational, Looman said.
In need of a place to train, Kentwood officials proposed the idea of a pre-structured container specifically designed for live fire training.
The new facility will be installed on the southern end of the Kentwood Department of Public Works property, at 5068 Breton Road SE . Crews will begin installing the system this summer, and Looman said he expects it to be ready to use by the end of fall 2025.
Looman said the facility won’t just be used by Kentwood’s 54 uniformed firefighters on staff, but also by Kentwood police and other first responders.
“We’re going to set this up so it’s both usable for fire and police, because we want to get the most out of it,” he said. “Our police don’t have a training area either, so we want to make sure that we incorporate our police department. It’s the best bang for our buck, for spending our public’s money.”
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