A practice fire turned into the real thing in Cocoa on Tuesday.
Firefighters had deliberately set fire to an abandoned building on Monday, and they thought they had put it out, only to be called back Tuesday morning, WESH 2 News reported.
To the firefighters' astonishment, the fire that they practiced putting out on Monday started again after smoldering all night.
The assistant fire chief said they had monitored the fire throughout the night and there were no visible signs of fire until the flames went through the roof on Tuesday morning.
The building is abandoned, as are all the buildings on the block. They were built as government housing decades ago, and are now ticketed for the bulldozer. It's a perfect training ground for firefighters.
It appears Monday's training fire may have found its way between the sandwich-like layers of ceiling material, somehow staying alive without giving off any visible smoke.
So, when the new fire broke out Tuesday morning, firefighters got even more training -- training they hadn't planned on. And they learned a lesson.
"In these type of construction homes and everything else, you'll have no visible smoke. It's very good training for first thing in the morning," said assistant fire Chief Mike Corby.
No one lives nearby. In fact, one of the closest occupied buildings is a city fire station. Firefighters were able to arrive quickly enough to keep the new blaze from spreading.
The department plans to set more training fires in the same building, but called off Tuesday's planned training session after it turned into the real thing.
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