Flames ripped through a Stevens Point home Monday and smoke filled the surrounding neighborhood, but the scene was no cause for alarm. Instead, the event was a training tool for local firefighters.
The Stevens Point Fire Department had a rare opportunity to hold live-fire training at a city-owned home at 281 Washington Ave. Monday morning and afternoon.
“(Opportunities like this are) absolutely crucial,” said Stevens Point Fire Department Lt. David Briggs. “With (live-fire training), it’s a night-and-day difference from using a training structure like at the tech schools, to being able to use a real, live structure like this. In those (training) structures, that are designed, tested, have thermal sensors in them, you have what’s essentially a campfire in the middle of a concrete and metal room. So the issue then becomes that nothing around it can burn and you know that nothing else can happen.