WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAU) — The Wausau fire department is starting to draw regional and national attention with their live fire training exercises.
The burns are not only a chance for Wausau firefighters to hone their skills in putting out fires, but are also used for all facets of fire training, including arson and insurance investigations. Wausau fire battalion chief Paul Czarapata says a lot of groups are interested in these hands on training exercises. “This last event that we had, we actually had some people come from Kansas, New Jersey and from Boston. So our reach in terms of bringing people in has grown.”
Part of that effort has come with their partnership with EFI Global which deals in fire investigation and engineering. The department also put together a full scale experiment burn with the ATF in 2013 when a series of identical apartments were turned over to the city. Experts placed cameras in the buildings and started different sorts of fires and used different sorts of fire fighting methods to put out the blazes.
Czarapata says they’re now hearing from other groups that would like to join in. “We’re now getting inquiries from other places, that are ‘Hey how are you partnering with other people?’ and ‘How are you putting these events together so that this training can be acquired in more than just central Wisconsin?’” The department has now been videotaping their training in order to help spread that knowledge. “We partnered with the Tech with that videotape and a written test to get continuing education units. Not only for our personnel, but for CFIs, or Certified Fire Investigators, that registered for the class, and people on the insurance side as well.”
Czarapata says more burns are scheduled in the next several weeks to continue training both their recruits and officers.
