The Delaware State Fire School will now be able to upgrade its programs with the help of a federal grant.
Joined by Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, Monday morning, the Delaware State Fire School was awarded over $300,000 through the Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program. They plan to use it to buy a car fire prop and a commercially made burn simulator.Training Administrator Tucker Dempsey said the burn simulator — cargo containers assembled to resemble a house — will allow for more realistic training. Currently, the school uses a brick building that is over 70 years old that they can only burn straw in.
“We can only get to a certain temperature with the building we have,” Dempsey said. “It also doesn’t really put conditions as realistic as it could be, so when firefighters come out here and they train on it, they might be shocked when they get to a real fire and realize it’s a lot hotter.”
The new simulator, Dempsey said, will be able to burn plywood and pallets, which will increase the temperatures and smoke generation, making it more realistic for firefighters to train in.
The Assistance to Firefighters program has been awarding grants since 2001. The state’s fire school has received one each year since state fire training academies became eligible three years ago.
Last year, the school was awarded money to buy its own fire engine, and just purchased it two months ago.
“We never had one before at the school. We’ve always had to rely on other companies bringing in fire engines for our training,” Dempsey said. “The problem has gotten to be you’re tying up somebody for an entire day who may not even be participating in the training, they might just be providing the engine for the training. So they come out here and spend the whole day with us, and it was getting harder for folks to commit to send it. Plus, it takes a fire engine out of service.”
Dempsey says over the last three years, the Delaware State Fire School has received a total of over $1 million from the grant program.
The Delaware State Fire School has three sites in Dover, New Castle and Georgetown.