(Beaver Dam) The Beaver Dam Fire Department is inviting the public to an open house of their new training facility. The structure, the first of its kind for the department, opened up over the summer months at its location on 640 South Center Street.
The building was manufactured in Illinois, where American Fire Training Systems is based. The company designs and constructs fire training towers for departments and military installations around the world.
Fire Chief Michael Wesle says this will be the first opportunity for the public to visit their new training facility.
“We’ve had quite a few people who’ve stopped by…the training facility is at the old department of public works facility…there’s still a lot of brush drop off and other uses for the area…so, we have quite a few people that’ll stop by and take a quick look,” says Wesle. “But we haven’t actually had an open house where our elected officials and the general public can come and they can take a look at the facility and actually see what it’s all about.”
Wesle says those who attend the open house will be able to walk through the training tower and see the rooms where they do burns as well as other features including props. He says there will also be demonstrations, weather permitting.
“Should have some rope activities going on…maybe some hauling of bringing people up some rappelling…that’s going to be going on, probably, when we’re doing tours,” says Wesle. “And then some of the demonstrations are towards the end…what we’ll do is a live fire scenario but without the live fire. We will smoke the building up with artificial smoke…we’re going to deploy some hose lines, throw some ladders up.”
The open house is on October 14th from 10am to 12pm, with the live fire training scenario happening at noon. Wesle says there will also be apparatus displays and kids activities.
