The DIY Training Tower: How to build one with limited funds & staff
By Bob Kolva

How do remote rural and small-town fire departments keep their personnel up to date on structural search and rescue, ventilation and firefighter rescue techniques when the nearest urban training facility is hours away? That was the question we asked ourselves when, once again, our rural department had to cancel our training day at the regional training tower because we didn’t have enough personnel to man the tower while also leaving someone back in the district to keep the home fires from burning.

Training Obstacles
Like many rural departments, we once relied on acquired structures for burn practice and homes under construction for search and rescue training; however, due to ever-increasing restrictions on smoke, asbestos and runoff, training burns are rapidly becoming a thing of the past in our area. The downturn in the housing market has severely limited the availability of new construction, and most homeowners don’t like the idea of a bunch of firefighters crawling around on their beige carpet.

Today, because of our dwindling personnel numbers, it’s very difficult to use the regional training towers or safely manage acquired structure burns. A minimum of six firefighters are needed to cover safety and command when we use the local burn tower, but that number doesn’t include the senior firefighters needed to lead teams into the burn room. Once we assemble enough volunteers to fill the teaching, safety and student slots, no one is left to protect the district.

But regular training exercises are particularly crucial for our department because in a district that might go a couple of years without a structure fire, many of our newer members’ firefighting experience is limited to watching reruns of “Emergency!”

Our tower is a small, two-story cabin designed and constructed so we can teach and drill on the basics of search and rescue, ventilation and firefighter survival. Photo Bob Kolva

Here, we begin the construction process by setting the footings for the tower. Photo Dave VanDerostyne

The Training Cabin
Our district isn’t poor, but we certainly don’t have the tens of thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars needed to build a training tower. So, is there an alternative? Yes! We built our own training tower.

Now, before you jump to conclusions, we’re not talking about a five-story reinforced concrete and steel tower with fire rooms on three floors and a bomb shelter in the basement. Our tower doesn’t have a burn room. In fact, it really isn’t a “tower” (except to those who built it). It’s more of a small, two-story cabin designed and constructed so we can teach and drill on the basics of search and rescue, ventilation and firefighter survival.

Our tower includes:
• A Denver prop;
• A confined-space maze;
• Areas for wall and ceiling breaching;
• Areas for search and rescue operations;
• Areas for cutting attic, roof and interior ventilation;
• Entrapment and self-rescue scenarios; and
• Laddering areas.

Design & Redesign
Although it was a simple structure, the construction process proved complicated. First, we needed to determine what we wanted to include in our tower. Second, we had to ask ourselves, could we afford what we wanted or just what we needed?

Ultimately, we did end up getting what we wanted (within reason), so with those questions answered, we started our design. Fortunately, one of our volunteers, Dave VanDerostyne, was also a structural engineer who designed the building, drafted the plans and, with his construction background, oversaw the project.

Once the building plans were completed, we went to the building department to get a permit. In our county, fire departments aren’t given any special favors; in fact, the opposite seemed to be the case. We wanted to build the tower on the property where our new station would be located, but for reasons only the county planner knows, we couldn’t build on unoccupied property.

So, we went back to the drawing board. We didn’t want to construct a permanent structure on property we hoped to be vacating in a couple of years. So VanDerostyne redesigned the tower to make it mobile without the use of wheels or a hitch. Now, when the time comes to move into the new station, we’ll be able to load the tower on a flatbed trailer and transport it 2 miles to its new address.

The Volunteer Beehive
As construction manager, VanDerostyne secured the materials with the $6,000 we already had in our budget, while our volunteer firefighters provided the manpower. If these resources hadn’t been available, we would’ve had to rely on donated materials and labor, which would’ve been greatly appreciated and would’ve gone a long way toward making our tower a community project.

But the blessing of volunteer labor eventually turned into a curse as enthusiasm waned when the project dragged on past the third weekend. (Note: The more accomplished before tedium sets in, the better off for all.) The first couple of days were a beehive of activity, to the point that boards that one person had measured, cut and stacked for one wall were grabbed by another and measured, cut and stacked for a different wall. Fortunately, with limited power on the job site, we could only run a couple of saws at once, reducing the chance of those boards being cut a third time.

Hammer Time
My first day on the job site began with a quiz regarding my construction experience, followed by an inspection of my hammer. I’m proud to say my hammer passed; it had those little bumpy things on the face of the head. As you can tell by my mastery of construction lingo, I’m not a journeyman carpenter, but apparently I was adequate for the task at hand. I found my construction experience to be typical of our department, even though we do have some very capable builders among our ranks.

Why Wait?
As is common with eager volunteers, we weren’t about to wait for the project’s completion before initiating the tower’s use. As soon as the walls were up, we began search and rescue, confined-space and self-rescue training.

As it turned out, if we had waited for completion, we would’ve missed out on a lot of training opportunities that year, as things did not move along as quickly as we had hoped. After the first few days, the crew whittled itself down to just a handful of laborers. In some ways, this created a more efficient work environment. But because VanDerostyne was the project’s designer and manager, we were only able to work when he was available to oversee the job.

We also dodged a bullet one day when we realized that our new tower blocked the lake view of our neighbor across the street. Fortunately, they were members of our fire auxiliary, so they were sympathetic to our needs and were happy that we allowed them to pick the final color (red, to match our station) of the tower.