Shown here is a home on Rockingham Road, which area firefighter intentionally set ablaze as part of a drill Monday evening. Scan the QR code for a video from the scene.
Fire fighters battle blaze as part of training exercise
ROCKINGHAM — Rockingham Firefighters closed off a section of Rockingham Road to battle a blaze completely engulfing a home Monday evening.
Long before arriving at the scene, firefighters anticipated the fire would result in a total loss of the structure, which they should considering RFD firefighters spent hours preparing the building to burn as part of a training exercise.
“This is a training burn. It’s a condemened house. The city condemned the house and if it’s feasable to do it, then we’ll go ahead and burn them to cut down to cut down on the cost of cleanup (after demolition) and all that type of stuff. We try to make sure it’s far enough away from some of the adjacent houses,” RFD Chief Harold Isler said.
As part of the drill, firefighters spent hours preparing the site, and removing potential environmental contaminants typical in many house fires. Due to the location of the home in a residential neighborhood and nearby folliage, Islser felt it was the perfect place to host a drill.
We really don’t know when they come … Sometimes we’ll get homeowners that want to donate the house to us and we’ll do it, but there is a process to it. We have to get the asbestos removed from it because asbestos is a cancer causing agent. That was part of the issue with this one. It had asbestos shingles on the side of it … We had to remove that stuff before we could actually burn it, then we got through the permitting process,” Isler said.
With winter approaching, and homeowners/renters becoming more reliant on alternative methods of heating their such as space heaters and electric blankets, Isler said Monday’s drill could not have been better timed.
“It’s very important. We hit a lot of objectives here tonight. Water supply, we’re connected to the fire hydrant. We have somebody flowing multiple water lines. All of this aides in professional development. The house was in a perfectly good location – close to a wooded area. It’s what we call exposure protection. If there is a house fire, then we want to keep it out of the woods, so we don’t have a secondary type incidient so you don’t have a wood fire going on along with a house fire. We have a house that’s close by, so we had to spray water on it to keep it cool so it doesn’t do any additional damage tonight,” Isler said.