Rio Hondo Fire Academy Santa Fe Springs Training Center

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The Santa Fe Springs Regional Training Center is the newest of six regional training centers in Los Angeles County. The six acre training facility is now about 80% complete.

The Santa Fe Springs Fire Department and Rio Hondo College share this facility which is a continuation of a relationship they have had for more than 40 years.

"I feel that this training center, once we're done, will probably be one of the more premier training centers out of the six. With the props that we have, a lot of the other training centers don't have them," said Fire Chief Alex Rodriguez of the Santa Fe Springs Fire Department.  

The Los Angeles County Fire Chief's Association secured grants to buy many of the props that will be used for both Fire Academy classes and training of firefighters from throughout the area.

"We received a total of close to a half-million dollars in grant funding to pay for all these props and it's a regional training site for Homeland Security," Rodriguez said.

"We look at this as the home of Regional Task Force 2 which is comprised of the cities of Santa Fe Springs, Downey, Compton, Montebello and Vernon Fire Departments who come together and make that 29 member regional task force team," explained Santa Fe Springs Fire Department Division Chief Chris Crispo.

In order to make the training dollars stretch, they were able to work with many local vendors to get things either at a discount or for free. One very important item is a tanker truck donated by ExxonMobile.

"These are very difficult props and items to get a hold of on a normal basis. The costs are so prohibitive," said Captain Brent Hayward. 

Without this prop, they would have to have a company bring out a tanker to show the equipment. Instead, they can tip the rear tanker on its side and use it for training including hazmat and urban search and rescue.

"I don't know if we've donated equipment before but we do lost of training exercises with our local emergency responders," said Dennis Slauson of ExxonMobile Pipeline Company.

Catwalks will also be built on top of the units to show students valving assemblies, hatches and the compartmentalization of the vehicle. Nearby is a rail car sitting on tracks that was set up with the help of a local crane company.

Their most diverse prop is the rubble pile also built from donations. On-duty personnel are used to maximize training dollars.   

"They're developing this prop and they're also getting training time out of this. We need to work with our breaching and breaking tools. They are doing that while they are working on the site," explained Crispo.

There are pancake collapses, lean-to collapses, cantilever collapses along with a basement and a partially collapsed parking structure with five vehicles located in different parts of the garage.

"They're actually wired so that the lights work, the horns work so we can actually simulate realism," said Division Chief Stan Klopfenstein. 

The prop is also ever changing with help from a large forklift, cranes and extra concrete they have on-site. "So when our rescue teams roll in here to practice, it's going to be different today than it was say, yesterday when they came here to practice," Klopfenstein said.

Since they are located right near the Whittier Narrows earthquake fault that shook Southern California Tuesday morning, they had to make sure it was safe for the rescuers so all the concrete components are connected to each other.

The next training component to be built will be a completely furnished wood frame shoring prop with part of it square and part collapsed.  

"It's going to be about 3200 square feet. There's going to be partial two story, there's going to be residential, commercial, and apartment building. The apartment building will be a collapsed structure actually collapsed into a carport on vehicles," explained Klopfenstein.

The center also has a trench rescue prop, a cracking tower and a pipe tree that can be used during the two 17-week Fire Academy's offered through Rio Hondo College. Each academy will have about 40 to 50 students sponsored by different agencies. There is also a Wildland Fire Academy with 80 students taught once a year.

"We have a relationship with the US Forest Service and our students will eventually be hired by the US Forest Service and fight fire during the wildland fire season," said Tracy Rickman of the Rio Hondo College Fire Technology Program.

It took three years to build this training facility the way they envisioned it to be and it was a difficult process. "Getting all those people together and on the same page is challenging but there's really a synergy here, we are really working well together," said Crispo. He went on to explain, "Almost daily, a new piece of equipment is coming in, another vendor is coming up. As they see the site, people want to be part of it."

Any department who wants to use the props and equipment are welcome to do so. Departments from as far away as San Diego have already come to train here. Rio Hondo College also offers a Police Academy so they also plan to reach out to local police departments who want to use the props for training. If everything continues on schedule, the center should be completely operational by late Spring.



Author:Barbara Brooks - FDNNTV.com