ESD 1 officially breaks ground on new fire training center

Battalion Chief Charlie Dall shares a few words with attendees during the groundbreaking ceremony for the new firefighter training facility off Farmer Road on Friday, April 21.

Parker County has seen tremendous growth come to the area in recent years with significantly more planned for the near future. With growth comes change.

For Parker County Emergency Services District No. 1, the best thing they can do about all this change is to ensure they’re prepared to deal with it when it matters most.

With that in mind, on Friday, April 21, ESD 1 broke ground on a state-of-the-art training facility that will be housed at 1439 Farmer Road. The 15,000 square-foot structure will allow the department to train in real-world scenarios that are presently lacking in many facilities in neighboring counties.

“The biggest thing that is going to set this apart is our ability to burn Class A fuels, like wood and normal combustible products that generate smoke,” said Battalion Chief Charlie Dall. “A lot of the adjoining counties around us have flammable liquid products. They don’t put off the smoke. Modern fire behavior or contemporary fire dynamics that we are experiencing in the real-world setting is a lot of petrochemical products that makes fire burn with a higher heat release and, more notably, a lot of smoke. By creating an environment that can replicate that is going to set this apart from the other training facilities in the area.”

Training in the same conditions the firemen will likely encounter during an emergency call means a decrease in loss of life and loss of property.

“By having the fuel packages that we use, our suppression tactics will be more realistic,” Dall expounded. “And by having purpose-built props that replicate actual floor plans we see, it will provide us a better means of practicing and learning victim removal and victim search techniques.”

Plans for the facility will include space to replicate multiple types of facilities for the firefighters to train in ranging from standard family dwellings to warehouses. One of the hopes is this facility will allow other departments from around the state to come train alongside members of ESD 1 to improve their skills while making an investment in the local economy at the same time.