Dec. 13--BLOOMINGTON -- A regional fire training facility 10 years in the making is expected to become a reality next year, now that the Bloomington City Council has approved the purchase of a $258,000 live fire and rescue training tower.
Aldermen unanimously approved the purchase from Wisconsin-based Fire Facilities, Inc., during its Monday night council meeting. With installation costs of about $639,000, the total cost of erecting the tower is estimated at about $897,000.
The training tower will become the center piece of a multiple hazard training facility to be located behind the city's Hamilton Road fire station.
Bloomington Fire Department Chief Mike Kimmerling said his firefighters' only options to practice with live fire is for a property owner to donate an unused structure to the department for burning.
"Locations like that are hard to find," Kimmerling said, noting that the state must first approve demolition of such structures. "The days of just getting an old house and deciding to burn it for training just, quite frankly, doesn't exist."
Kimmerling said the city has discussed such a facility for about a decade, and now time is of the essence. Construction material costs are expected to increase by up to 25 percent in the new year and the city has already received a one-year extension on a $405,000 Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity grant, which now expires in September 2012.
The city also expects its Foreign Fire Insurance Board to reimburse over six years $150,000 of the tower's cost, bringing the city's total cost to about $342,000.
Kimmerling said the facility will be available to other area departments for an as yet undetermined fee. Any fees collected would only support related maintenance costs..
"I think we go a lot further to building bridges with all of our neighbors by having a facility, offering it for training, in hope of having some reciprocity when it comes to collaboration on interagency response," Kimmerling said.
Ward 7 Alderman Steven Purcell said not approving the training facility would mean "short changing the community."
"When a citizen has a fireman come to their house, they expect them to exactly know what they're doing, with the right equipment, the right gear, the right training and the right experience to where they can take care of the (fire) " Purcell said.
