Missoula City Fire Department To Conduct High Rise Fire Training at Jesse Hall on UM Campus
The Missoula Fire Department will be conducting a high rise fire training scenario at U of M’s Jesse Hall on Wednesday.
Training Officer Terran Lohman said the exercise will be a hands on fire simulation on the sixth floor with victims trapped.
"We try to have this training when the kids are out of school and it's a good training and refresher for our firefighters to basically see what it's like and perform in a high rise type of incident," Lohman said. "We'll have some smoke machines going on a particular floor in a particular room and it's just a water-based vapor. We'll have some university students as actors who portray victims, and it'll be a test for firefighters to size up the incident and to be able to perform a rescue as well fire attack and control."
The fire department added this message to its news release on Monday.
"High rise buildings are generally equipped with good alarm notification systems to provide early warnings of a fire to allow occupants to safely evacuate. Some even have sprinkler systems installed to keep the fire in check until Fire Department personnel arrive to fully extinguish the fire. Treat every alarm as a fire and start to evacuate immediately, and while these buildings have elevators we recommend to use the stairwell to evacuate as elevators have been known to fail during a fire."
The exercise is scheduled from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. on Wednesday.