Radcliff Fire Department
Live Fire Training
Gaining
Experience and Reliving Memories During Live Fire Training
by Angela Townsend
Anthony and Nathalie Kieta moved into the house on North Wilson Road in January
of 1947.
“This was all farmland back then,” said their daughter, Barbara Brink, who was
about ten years old when her family moved from Fort Knox to Radcliff. “The house
was smaller, so we built onto it. We hand-dug the basement. My three brothers
and me grew up here.”
As firefighters began a series of training burns on the second floor of the
house Friday night, Mrs. Brink pointed to where the outhouse once sat and shared
how she used to pump water from a well. “And we used an old crank telephone,”
she said. “There were eight on our party line.”
“We started out with 28 acres,” she said. “There was a field full of cows behind
our house. None of these businesses were here, and the four-lane road didn’t
exist. We used to get woke up by the tanks rumbling by on their way to the
range. That was after the war…”
Her son-in-law, Freddy Thomas, pointed to a series of concrete panels inlaid
with seashells and sand dollars along the foundation of the house. “The Kietas
made those and put them there,” he said. “They brought the shells from Florida.”
“They went to
Cocoa Beach every year,” agreed Mrs. Brink. “They’d leave after election day
and return before tax season.” She and Mr. Thomas recalled that Anthony and
Nathalie enjoyed designing animals and other small treasures using the shells
they collected.
In preparation
for training, the glass had been removed from all the windows, which were then
covered with strips of aluminum. As flames reached around the frame of a
second-floor window, Mrs. Brink paused to watch. “It would have cost too much to
fix the place up,” she said. “It just wasn’t worth it, so we offered it to the
fire department.”
Anthony Kieta
died in 1991. His wife passed away ten years later. The house has sat vacant
since October 2001, until Friday evening, when Radcliff firefighters moved in.
Getting a house ready for live fire training requires extensive preparation. “We
remove all the furnishings from every room in the house,” said Radcliff Fire
Chief Rick Ledford. “We make our own furniture using pallets and straw, so that
we can set up a normal residential-type configuration inside of it.”
Before a house can be burned for training, shingles and tarpaper have to be
removed, and the house must be inspected to ensure no asbestos is present. “The
houses are burned in compliance with the NFPA (National Fire Protection
Association) standards,” said Chief Ledford. Among other details, NFPA 1403, the
‘Standards for Live Fire Training’, outlines all the safety measures and
regulates the number of instructors per number of students, as well as the
amount and type of training a firefighter must have prior to participating in a
live burn. Chief Ledford adds that certification under NFPA 1403 is also a
requirement for instructors.
Certain safety measures are taken at the site before training begins. “We remove
all locking devices from all the doors and make sure all the glass and other
debris are clear,” said Chief Ledford. All doors are cut off six to eight inches
above the floor in order to prevent hose lines from getting caught. “And we do a
little bit of structural analysis on the building to decide where we’re going to
burn first and how long we’re going to burn in each area,” said Chief Ledford.
That way we can drop the house in a predetermined method; it’s called segment
burning.”
Segment burning involves setting fires in key areas throughout the structure to
weaken those points so that during the final burn the building will “fold in on
itself like a box,” Chief Ledford explained. He was a member of a team that
began using this method approximately fifteen years ago. “That method proved to
be really good, rather than just randomly starting fires and letting the house
burn and fall where it may. We’ve got a pretty good success rate of being able
to drop the house within itself when it’s done,” Chief Ledford said. “It also
provides more control, which makes it safer for the students as well.”
Twenty-one students from two departments completed a total of 18 individual
burns in the house. Valley Creek and Vine Grove Fire Departments also brought
their junior firefighters to the scene to observe the proceedings from across
the street.
Training began at 9 p.m. and continued until 4:30 a.m. Radcliff police officers
maintained a road block through the night.
“There’s a whole gamut that we run each crew through,” said Chief Ledford. “We
take the firefighters into the house when the fire is hardly knee-high, and that
way they get to see the conditions worsen in the house, they get to see the
smoke start to drop, they can see the fire progress up the wall and then become
horizontal flames when they hit the ceiling. They get to see the ill effects of
forcing a door open versus easing it open and seeing what’s inside.”
Chief Ledford says the instructors try to stick with the same scenario each time
to reinforce the students’ experience. “We want to watch them improve. So if I
light a fire this time and explain the basics to you and what you need to do,
the next time you come in, we expect to see you do that without having to tell
you. And everything from looking at what the house is made of prior to going in,
to what to do when the fire begins to exceed your ability to extinguish it, we
want to see everything in that spectrum.”
Training was completed and the house was allowed to burn just after 2 a.m.
Mrs. Brink and a multitude of family members stayed to watch it go.
Photos by Steven and Angela
Townsend
