Nothing beats burning a real building to train your people! We have helped home owners get rid of properties that needed to come down for various reasons dozens of times. The process does have a path to follow before a match can be struck but in the long run the benifit to the fire department and the end cost to the property owner makes it well worth the time. We accept the use of properties for the Departments live fire training at no cost to the Town with the understanding that the Fire Department will supervise the final demolition of the property at no cost to the owner. We will stay with the building until the fire is out and then turn it back over to the owner for what ever needs to be done. The owner has to understand that there will be debris leftover, generally unburned produces and just the ashes them selves that the owner will be responsible to clean up.

The short version to the process is:

1> The propery owner contacts the Fire Chief and expresses the wish to have the Fire Department use his property for live fire training. We will go and look at the property and if it meets the needs and is safe for us to put people into for training we will continue with the project.

2> State,County and Local fire trainers then get together and prepare a training plan for this property, identifying who will be involved, and the time line when it can be done. "When" can be affected by many factors such as the time of year VS availailable Fire Fighters, other training programs and the big one the Danger to the community from Smoke or dry outside fire conditions. Generally we try to burn buildings in the Fall or early spring when the fire danger is low, it is warm enough so as to not freeze our equipment and we have a large group of members available

3> When the date, time and curriculum is set, the permits are next with the property owner canceling any insurance on the property, removing or disconnecting utilities including water,sewer,electric and communications. Any fuels for heating must be removed as well. A permission slip and state burning permit are next followed by the match.

4> As mentioned earlier, we will use whatever we can of the building for live fire training until the time comes that there can be nothing more done safely. At that point we will just "let it go" and stay with it until the last of the building is in the cellar. On the date of burning it generally takes about 2 8 hour days to get all the training in and the building in a heap. We usually start the weekend before preparing for the burn and then make an all day project on a weekend for the grand event.

Anyone interested in donating a structure for burning can contact the dispatcher anytime and we will get back to you as soon as possible