MBFD constructing new training facility

At their drill field near Cahaba Heights, Mountain Brook Fire Department is in the process of constructing a new training facility. The multiroom, heated and air conditioned building is a joint project with the city’s police department, and it will service both entities.

“It’ll be in between the fire department drill field and the police firing range and their facility,” said MBFD Battalion Chief David Kennedy, who is in charge of safety and training for the department. “We can access both of our drill fields.”

The building offers benefits to both departments, Kennedy said, as it will provide a nearby facility so they can do classroom training and field training without having to travel 15 to 20 miles between the two.

“From a functionality standpoint, we don’t want to have to do training here [at Fire Station No. 1 in Crestline Village] and then have everyone get into vehicles and drive out, if we’re doing something that’s one day,” Kennedy said.

This process of learning in the classroom at a fire station before heading to the drill field is something they have had to do in the past, he said.

The building also will have plumbing and running water, which has never been at the drill field, aside from water connections used for hoses, Kennedy said. There will be showers in the building, which makes training safer for firefighters as well.

“When we talk about that kind of stuff, and the carcinogens and contaminants on us — our face, nose, eyes, our glands — it’s going to help because the quicker you can get that stuff off, the better,” Kennedy said. “That is just going to be amazing, how that’ll help us on the fire department side.”

The building, which will have a covered porch with ceiling fans, also will serve as a rehabilitation area during training exercises.

“We can do 30 minutes of training, take a break, talk about what we just did, how we can train better,” Kennedy said. “It’ll be a place in the shade, covered, where we can cool down. Before, what we used was portable fans to take breaks, so we’d be moving all of those portable fans around.”

When planning for the building, Kennedy said they “tried to think of everything we could do to make it more functional.” The added convenience of classrooms and offices for the fire and police departments’ training officers also allows the opportunity to host Firefighter Rookie Schools.

While no plans have been made to host a rookie school, Kennedy said having training rooms next to drill fields are required for those programs. The program is typically three to four months of training, five days a week for eight hours a day.

“Those facilities have to be right there, close together because you’re going to do PT [physical training] every day,” he said. “You’re getting these new recruits in the mindset of, not only are you training them on the topics they need to cover so they know it … but you’re also going out and training on how to set ladders [and fulfill other tasks].”

Rookie firefighters are new hires who have not been certified by the state, Kennedy said, so it is important to provide information and examples of what to do, how to do it and what can go wrong if you don’t. 

The department already has instructors, so if a decision to host a rookie school was approved, it would only take a few weeks to implement, Kennedy said. Before they’d take that step, however, they would need to have a few students out of MBFD.

“The fire college wouldn’t have a problem with the level of instructors we have for a rookie school,” Kennedy said. “But for Fire Chief Mullins to give something like that final approval … we’d have to have two or three newly hired guys.”

Construction on the training facility is scheduled to wrap up this month.