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The Russellville City Fire Department’s training/burn building is now complete.

One of the goals fire chief Billy Poole worked towards was getting a training center built for Russellville Fire Department and all surrounding fire departments to train on and experience live fire extinguishment.

With the new building, fire fighters will be able to practice in more real conditions, which will prepare them for battling real calls.

In 2010 Poole went to the Fire Commission and applied for a $50,000 grant to build a two story training/burn building. He received $52,000 that year to build the two story concrete building. In 2011 Poole went back to the Fire Commission and asked for another $50,000 grant to complete the project. He received the grant money a couple of months ago and started the process of getting the Padgenite (burn panels) installed so fire fighters could practice fire extinguishment in a safe environment.

“Besides live fire training, we can also practice ventilation, confine space rescue and rope rescue using the same building,” said Poole.

With this last grant Poole had enough to build two large concrete pads for vehicle fire training and for vehicle extrication training.

“I am very excited to get started with the live fire training. Structure fires today burn much faster and much hotter than those of the past because of all the plastics we have in our homes. Things like flat screen TVs, computers and printers even the furniture we sit on has a lot of petroleum based material in them which causes the fire to spread faster and burn hotter, we must train for that,” added Poole.

RFDs training facility is located on the lot of the old animal shelter behind Cross Roads Church.