(Beaver Dam) The Beaver Dam Fire Department’s new training facility should be ready to be utilized in the coming weeks. It is located in the 600 block of South Center Street, the site of the old Department of Public Works building. The space will feature 2,880 square feet of training area, two burn rooms, an assortment of training props, and a four story tall training tower. Fire Chief Michael Wesle says the facility is versatile.
“A couple of things that we really like about it is the interior…it has movable panels so, from day to day, we can redesign what it looks like,” says Wesle. “We can make narrow hallways…we can make big open rooms. There’s a burn room on the first floor, a burn room on the second floor and then it’ll have a tower that we can do confined space and repelling and rope stuff off the back. It’s going to be really good for the department.”
The building was manufactured in Illinois then delivered to Beaver Dam where it will be assembled. Wesle says the parts began to arrive last week and crews will begin putting it together on June 12th. He added that the foundation was poured about three weeks ago.
During a recent appearance on Community Comment, the chief said his department will be using the facility quite often.
“I anticipate that its going to be used several times a week…probably a little bit more than that in the beginning…we’re not going to be burning in it several times a week…the burns in it are going to be a lot more sparse,” says Wesle. “We’re probably talking about four to six burns a year were we’ll actually have a larger training…bring people in. There will be people there regularly if not daily throwing ladders, doing searches, focusing on the basics of the fire service.”
Wesle says the building will also be used for confined space rescue training with a class scheduled in August. Funding for the project was secured while Wesle’s predecessor, Alan Mannel, was chief. When he started 14 years ago, Mannel says he was (quote) “on the job for 15 minutes” when he identified a need for a fire training facility.
“Just a place to go and make noise and generate smoke…replicate emergency scenes without damaging good buildings,” says Mannel. “We would crawl around the basement of city hall with air packs on…scrape the walls…you need a place to train. You don’t want to be walking around on the roof of city hall [poking] holes in the roof membranes…you just can’t do the things you need to do in a typical structure.”
Wesle says it is an option to have other area departments come and utilize the space for training needs, but the focus now is getting the building installed. He does add that they have discussed renting the facility out or hosting regional trainings.
