A successful bid on a piece of training equipment in a recent state auction will benefit firefighters throughout Vernon County for years to come. In August, 11 of the county’s 13 fire departments joined forces to buy a mobile burn tower. The tower allows firefighters to prepare training scenarios on a multi-story building. Most of the county’s fire departments will share in access to the tower, which will help fire departments offer necessary training to recruits and veteran firefighters alike. The tower will allow fire departments to train together, so they become better partners in the county’s already-successful mutual aid plan. “This makes our company of 25 firefighters larger because of all the training we’ll be able to do together with our neighboring departments,” Stoddard-Bergen Fire Chief Joe Pfaff said. “We will get to know our partners in mutual aid better, which will help us when multiple departments are called to the same fire.” “This also allows us to do training much more safely than at a controlled burn,” Stoddard-Bergen Second Assistant Fire Chief Brian Lehmann said. “We can control the scenarios in so many different ways.” The Stoddard-Bergen Fire Department had the tower on display at its annual Labor Day picnic celebration at the village park, Saturday. Pfaff said the 11 departments who own the tower held a lottery to see which month of the year they could have possession of the tower. Stoddard-Bergen had No. 3 in the lottery and after the first two picks, it chose to have the tower in September. This means the tower could be used for training on village-owned property and the tower could be publicly displayed at the picnic.