New environmentally friendly Cape regional fire training facility slated for spring

WEST YARMOUTH — Months after workers demolished the burn buildings at the Barnstable County Fire and Rescue Training Academy in Hyannis because of widespread PFAS contamination, fire officials are welcoming a new regional fire training building — an environmentally safe place for firefighters to practice life-and-death skills without traveling off-Cape.

The building, located in a grass field behind Yarmouth Fire Station 3 on Buck Island Road and resembling a residential home firefighters might be called to, will be piped with propane lines that can be ignited and extinguished remotely. A bedroom in the two-and-a-half story, metal-clad building, for example, could have a metal bed frame that appears to be on fire when the fuel is lit.

Fire officials likened the technology to a gas grill.

“Because we're watching what they're doing, we can shut the gas off when we think that enough water has been applied,” said Sandwich Fire Chief John Burke, who is also the president of the Barnstable County Fire Chiefs Association.

Firefighters will use water from fire trucks involved in the drills to practice extinguishing different types of flames in different conditions within the building. Firefighters will also be able to practice responding to other hazards, including structural collapse, officials said.

Most importantly, no aqueous film-forming foam — the cause of costly PFAS contamination at fire training sites, airports and military installations and in water supplies across the Cape and Islands and the country — will be used. PFAS chemicals (or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) used in the foam have been linked to testicular, kidney, and other cancers, liver damage, high cholesterol, reduced vaccine efficacy, and a host of other maladies.

"There will be no foam usage," Burke said.

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Because the only material that will be burned is propane, there will be no real smoke at the building. Instead, the structure will be filled with artificial smoke that officials said poses no risk to firefighters but does simulate the intense indoor conditions at actual fires.

“It is that artificial, safe smoke along with a clean burning propane fire, and that is how this product will operate effectively and efficiently to train firefighters in an environmentally safe way,” said Steve Coan, a county consultant on the project who served for decades as Massachusetts Fire Marshal and head of the state’s Department of Fire Services.

Water used in the drills — designed to encourage water conservation, as firefighters are sometimes limited to the water available in their trucks — will drain into a collection system.

“The water runoff from this is pure water that has not come in contact with anything that would contaminate that water during the firefighting,” Coan said.

In addition to protecting the environment, officials said the new building will provide a safer training place for firefighters than traditional training buildings, where they extinguished real flames burning real materials that produced real smoke.

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“When we used to burn the pallets and everything, our structural gear would get contaminants on it because you're burning real stuff,” Burke said. “This technology gives us some excellent control measures so that we can make sure we're doing a good, safe training for our personnel.”

Why is this needed?

Before the phased closure of the Barnstable County Fire Training Academy began in 2019 because of PFAS contamination on the property and in area drinking water, Yarmouth Fire Chief Philip Simonean said his crews would train there twice a year — once in the spring and once in the fall.

“We were the biggest user of the Barnstable County facility,” Simonean said.

Getting his firefighters time in the burn buildings there was important to Simonean because live fire training has become increasingly vital in the evolving profession.

Across the Cape, thanks in part to the widespread adoption of safety measures like smoke detectors, firefighters are getting fewer calls for fires and more calls for medical incidents, Simonean said. That means firefighters are constantly honing their EMT and paramedic skills, but rarely working in dangerous fire conditions.

“There's certain members that if they're not on duty, they won't see a fire for six months to a year, potentially,” Simonean said. “That makes us a little bit vulnerable. It’s a safety issue, in my opinion. We need to have a facility to practice, and this is going to enable us to have that right in our backyard.”

It's not just Yarmouth that would benefit from a local fire training building, Coan said.

“This will serve as a regional asset,” he said.

According to Coan and Burke, who surveyed all of the Cape and Islands departments, almost all local chiefs expressed a need for a nearby fire training building.

The state’s fire academies are all off-Cape and, according to local fire officials, often have monthslong waiting lists.

In Massachusetts, firefighters are hired by departments before they are trained. Coan said that while new hires are waiting for a spot at a distant state academy, they are less able to assist with non-firefighting tasks at a scene — such as running hoses — without the kind of training a building like the one proposed for Yarmouth would provide.

For veteran firefighters, the building provides a place to practice existing skills and learn new firefighting techniques, he said.

Cape fire departments have access to mobile fire training "props" purchased by the county, including a trailer with two training rooms that can be transported from department to department. But fire officials said the props don’t provide the level of firefighting difficulty their staff needs to be fully prepared for a high-risk, real-life fire.

Officials are now considering modifying the mobile trailer into a training tool for maritime fires.

Who will manage the building?

Officials described the fire training building as a “turnkey” operation that will allow every Cape fire department to run its own drills.

At least one member of each department will be trained to operate the building’s controls using grant money from the Southeast Regional Homeland Security Advisory Council, which will allow departments to schedule time at the facility and then use it without needing to coordinate with another organization.

“It’s kind of like an Airbnb,” Burke said.

The building is primarily intended for use by Cape and Islands departments, but off-Cape departments will be allowed to use the facility if they schedule training time and ensure a firefighter trained in operating the building’s controls can run the session.

How is this being paid for?

The county is paying for the Yarmouth fire training building using a $636,000 2018 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a $63,000 match provided by Barnstable County.

The cost of the building is $469,800, but the county doesn’t yet have an estimate for total construction costs, which will be known after bids come back, according to County Administrator Beth Albert.

To pay for ongoing costs related to building maintenance and operation, fire departments that intend to use the facility will contribute an initial assessment fee of $500, and then a yet-to-be-determined user fee for training there.

“We're looking at somewhere in the range of between $500 and $1,000 for the user fee, which I don't want to say is a drop in the bucket, but it's very cost effective to pay that user fee for eight hours of use and multiple evolutions,” Burke said.

That money will be placed in an account that will be managed by Yarmouth’s fire and finance departments, according to Town Administrator Robert Whritenour. Albert said the county is currently finalizing a memorandum of understanding with Yarmouth that will put the arrangement in writing.

“The town has to maintain the facility and we're going to be doing a full cost analysis and ensuring on an ongoing basis that there's no additional costs,” Whritenour said. “That was a key point for the Board of Selectmen, that there’s no additional costs to the town of Yarmouth, that it's going to be self-sufficient.”

Yarmouth has already completed a site plan review for the project, though, no applications related to permitting have yet been received, according to the town building department.

Coan said the goal is to erect the building, parts of which have already arrived in Yarmouth, in the spring.

Reach Jeannette Hinkle at jhinkle@capecodonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: A new environmentally friendly fire training site slated for Cape