Homeowners Generosity Provides Valuable Training For Sartell FD [PHOTOS]

SARTELL (WJON News) -- The Sartell Fire Department took part in a special training exercise Saturday morning. A property owner along 19th Avenue South donated their home to be used for fire training.

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Fire Chief Peter Kedrowski says the commanders were able to train on the outside for how to manage a fire scene and on the inside firefighters got to practice hose advancement techniques, hose line management, and actually attack the fire. He says the live-controlled burn of a structure is a great opportunity for the department.

“A live burn in an acquired structure just gives us absolute, most realistic fire conditions that we can experience, a lot of our department is under five years, probably 50% of our fire department is under five years, so this is just an amazing opportunity for us to get people in there, feel the heat, the smoke conditions, see fire travel and work with experienced instructors and really advance their skill set.”

He says this type of training is invaluable to the department and is very generous of the owner because of all the steps needed to be able to donate the home for the training:

“We’re very fortunate to have homeowners that were willing to invest some of their own money to really help the fire department get this. There’s several inspections and some abatement processes that they have to do to make sure to burn the structure it’s not giving off any nasty chemicals so we’re very fortunate to have some homeowners that were willing to really step up and dedicate, dedicate their house with some financial investment and they’re doing this as well.”

Kedrowski says about two-thirds of the department took part on their own time to take advantage of the opportunity.

He says the training is beneficial for new firefighters and veterans alike and one of their mutual aid partners took park as well. Kendrowski has over 25 years of firefighting experience and took advantage of the training himself. The controlled structure burn went from 8:00 a.m. to Noon.

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