The reduction of live fires and new challenges facing firefighters have fire chiefs trying to increase the frequency of training in their departments. They are doing so not only with an emphasis on firefighting, but also with an emphasis on rescue, hazmat and emergency medical services. The budgetary pressures faced by many departments, which are being exacerbated by the current economic downturn, are causing fire chiefs and officers to turn to public-safety architects to design accessible and economical training facilities into their stations.

Where do you begin to design training into your next fire station? Mark Shoemaker of Cincinnati-headquartered Cole + Russell Architects encourages fire departments to start thinking about training from day one as they start to develop the basic program for the building.

"We talk about training-needs assessment and what kind of training would be most beneficial to the department?" Shoemaker says. "How will it be used and what kind of training exercises you want to perform needs to be discussed early on, otherwise you end up trying to retrofit something into a design and it may cost more to do it that way and not ultimately be as effective a training device."

Sometimes the type of department — career, volunteer, combination — will determine what kind of training to incorporate into the fire station. Career departments usually have a set number of training hours built in for on-duty firefighters. However, one of the biggest challenges for any volunteer department is offering hands-on, practical training for its firefighters.

"Volunteer departments face the problem of finding opportunities for their personnel to have time away from their regular jobs for training, which usually means evenings or weekends," says Ken Newell, of Stewart-Cooper-Newell Architects in Gastonia, N.C.

Start at square one

Both architects agree that by incorporating training at the beginning of the project, facilities geared toward enhancing practical skills — ladder evolutions, rappelling, self-rescue, confined-space rescue — can be integrated very economically into station design.

Several training facilities — such as hose-advance drills and training towers with advanced technical rope rescue and aerial ladder training exercises — might cost a bit more, but offer value in ease of access. When incorporating such facilities into the architectural design, communication is a necessity.

"We did a fire station where the tower was the tall feature of the building, but it was not an architectural feature so it was put on the back of the building and put on a large training pad where we could do a lot of extrication drills and things like that," Shoemaker says.

If the exterior design of the building or tower will be used for training purposes, Shoemaker recommends discussing that with your architect, as the structure will need added protection and structural reinforcement to withstand the abuse over the years. He added that retrofitting structures to reinforce them ultimately may cost more, and they still might be ineffective for training.

"You want to have a metal coping that's going to get dented and scratched by putting a ladder against it. You could put a blanket over it, but that's more of hazard, so we frequently put a cover of heavy steel, similar to diamond plate, over the parapet to help protect it," Shoemaker says. "We do that when we have an opening in mezzanine walls for ladder and rappelling. We also put protection plates on the wall and sills to eliminate damage to the building over time.

Newell suggests that most stairwells be configured in a scissor pattern — back and forth, with two landings per vertical floor.

"By adding another five to six feet to the width of the stairwell, a clear vertical space can be accommodated with the stairs wrapping around it," Newell says. "This vertical space can even be enclosed to create a shaft if desired." This vertical space can then be used for rope training from floor to floor, he added.