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Comment by Ben Waller on April 26, 2009 at 5:48pm

Contact Joe Berry at Firehouse Magazine.

He's a retired FDNY Ladder Company officer and now writes the lightweight construction column for firehouse. One of our firefighters got in contact with Joe. He sent us his Mini-Storage Fires DVD and blueprints and photos of the roll-up door prop at no cost to us.

The prop cost nearly $1,000 at a local metal shop, but we added a couple of things that Joe didn't have on his. We got the doors from a local mini-storage warehouse that was replacing all of their doors. We ran a month of mutual aid drills with a neighboring department and put around 200 firefighters through the class. It included the mini-storage fire preplan DVD, a Power Point on attacking roll-up doors and other mini-storage entry points, and a variety of attacks on a Friction Force door prop that the neighboring department already had. It kept four training officers (two from each department) busy for a month, in addition to the planning and lesson plan development.

Send me a friend invite and I'll work on getting Joe's email to you.
It is fantastic information!

Comment by Kenneth Holley on April 26, 2009 at 5:28pm

That's a very interesting prop. How did you come up with the ides for it? How did you get the material for the door?