Fire District 2 is in Warsaw doing structural collapse training.
The District is made up 120-150 members with specialized training from several departments in different Indiana counties.
At the training held on North Buffalo Street Monday, firefighters from South Bend, Elkhart, Mishawaka, and Clay Township participated alongside the Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory.
Members of the district team are required to do 80 hours of collapse technician training and another 50 in trench rescue training, which they did in Warsaw back in May.
RELATED: Warsaw hosts Fire District 2 tactical rescue training
As some homes will be demolished for the Buffalo Street Project, Warsaw-Wayne Fire Territory has been able to use them for practice.
Battalion Chief Aaron Boellinger tells News Now Warsaw the fire department used them for firefighter training this past week, but now Fire District 2 is collapsing portions of the homes for different shoring operations.
“So what they’re doing is they’re going in and putting the wood pieces into place which captures that load, then the start the reverse process of taking the load off of the victim that’s inside, which also provides a safe place for the fire department members to do the rescue.”
Boellinger says the realistic conditions help the firefighters practice for situations where they really have to think to put principles in place.
But how often would these types of skills need to be used in our area?
Boellinger says response to structural collapses is something they do a couple of times a year locally, mostly for cars into buildings. That includes when a car crashed into Hacienda in Warsaw back in November.
He says there have also been two tornadoes collapse buildings in Warsaw in the past two decades.
“It’s not an uncommon thing, let’s put it that way.”
