Fire It Up!

So you think it’s hot during the summer in Louisiana? Try it at almost 400 degrees hotter.

“It’s got sensors that measure water and heat to know if you are putting the fire out, but the fire kicks off at 500 degrees for safety,” said Bayou Cane Fire Department assistant fire chief Kenny Hill as he walked around the station’s mobile, live burn training unit. “If the firemen stop fighting the fire (and it’s not out), the sensors can flare the fire back up, like with embers at a real fire.”

The unit, one of two large training props the department purchased with a $663,855 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, is a large 18-wheeler trailer that can be modified to a one- or two-story structure. Panels inside the trailer can be moved around to simulate a kitchen, living room or bedroom. A second, collapsible story allows firefighters to practice with different types of roofs and multiple-story buildings and conduct confined space rescues. The steel-lined trailer is also outfitted with a steal stove, furniture, vents and propane cylinder that can all emit controlled fire.

“This prop allows us to conduct in-house training with live fires,” Hill said. “Firefighters gain experience without anything burning down. It’s critical to our crew and will help us perfect our firefighting.”

The department also used the grant money to purchase a liquid 18-wheeler trailer to practice flash fires and Hazmat exercises and a fire-prevention trailer to teach adults and children about home fire safety.

Before receiving the equipment last December, the department had to travel to the Little Caillou station or Thibodaux fire stations to receive live burn training, but now the department, which has several fireman certified to run the unit during training exercises, hopes to serve as a training hub for other area departments without such training equipment.

Capt. Daniel Clemons, who has been with BCFD for six years, is one of the firemen certified to run the building during training exercises.

“I’ve trained in it quite a bit,” Clemons said. “We can host several different fire scenarios and fight fires inside in a closed environment. It’s as close as we can get to the real thing without setting a house on fire. It’s very helpful and will keep us up to date on our training.”

When responding to a fire, trucks are sent from each of the department’s four stations, and each truck conducts a specific job at the site.

“Some of us will be fighting the fire, and others will be helping with ventilation,” Clemons said. “The training unit also has an area for us to practice breaking two by fours to simulate breaking through a roof, which is something we may also have to do during a fire.”

As Clemons trains his coworkers with the new equipment, the mobile live burn training unit exercises provide the best practice for structure fires, which make up the majority of the department’s fire calls. Fire calls to the department are broken down into 17 different kinds of blazes, including structure fires, vehicle fires, grass fires, cooking fires and trash fires. In 2012, the department responded to 14 building fires, and it has already responded to nine so far this year.

“Our bread and butter are structure fires,” said BCFD Chief Ken Himel. “Most of them are residential fires, but in large cities like New York or Chicago, those departments probably see more commercial fires.”

According to Himel, who has been with BCFD for five years and was previously employed with the state fire marshal’s office, the key to safely battling a structure fire is to know the construction of the building.

“You have to read the building,” he said. “We say ‘Trust the truss.’ If the roof comes down on a building during a fire, it can be catastrophic. The more we know about the building – the roof, the windows – the better.”

In addition to knowledge of the building, if it is available, Himel also looks at fire reports from other agencies to see how they fight certain kinds of fires.

Even though structure fires keep the department the busiest, BCFD also responded to eight grass fires last year, but the fires are nothing like the one that recently took the lives of 19 of the 20 Granite Mountain Hotshot firefighting crew.

“Fires like those are few and far between,” Himel said. “We are fortunate that there are not many wildfires here. We do get marsh fires, but that is a totally different animal. It (wildfires in Arizona) can go from a ‘simple’ fire, and the wind will shift and it will be all around you. Those firemen use the best approaches to fighting wildfires.”

According to Himel, the lay of the land, vegetation and climate in Terrebonne Parish are not conducive to producing such fires, and those that do occur in the department’s area are normally between U.S. Highway 90 and Savanne Road.

“With the marsh, we have natural fire breaks like canals and bayous to help stop fires and not trap us,” he said. “They tend to border fires so they are not burning in the wide open. Also, the thickness of vegetation they have there (in Arizona) is different from what we have, and the humidity here helps keep things from burning.”

Chances for grass fires are best in early spring and late winter, when the weather is driest, the fires can be attributed to several different factors.

“A few years ago, some older teens who were playing with a flare gun started marsh fire,” Himel said. “Rabbit hunters will also light fires to flush out rabbits, which they are not supposed to do, and fires can also start by someone throwing a cigarette butt out of their vehicle window.

“These are intentional fires that can carry criminal charges, but it’s usually ‘Good luck finding the person who started it.’”

If conditions in the area become dry enough, the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry may issue a burn ban, usually on a parish or regional level, but those have been few and far between in the Bayou Cane area.

“We had a long burn ban about two or three years ago,” Himel said. “It lasted almost 70 days.”

In addition to early spring and late winter grass fires, the department also sees small spikes in other types of fire calls in the early winter and during the summer.

“That first cold snap, people start pulling out portable heaters,” Himel said. “They may get out of bed, fling the blanket over the heater and start a fire. Summer is also a little busy, with kids out of school and more people out and about.”