By Staff Sgt. Brad Staggs
BUTLERVILLE, Ind. — Muscatatuck Urban Training Center prides itself on providing training venues that can be used by any organization that wants to use them, from the military to first responders. Now one more venue has been added... a burn tower for use in fire training.
"Having this at Muscatatuck raises our stock," said site commander Lt. Col. Chris Kelsey. "We're more than just military training; this is a whole of government concept."
The whole of government concept says that no single element can work in a vacuum. Organizations come together at MUTC to train and learn from each other and this includes civilian first responders and their military counterparts.
MUTC Fire Department Chief Dean Lucas explained that this particular burn tower was much more complex than any he had worked with before. "[The burn tower] is a lot more realistic and there are a lot more things you can do with it. Not only is it a burn tower, you can rappel off of it, you can perform search and rescue, ventilation training, and some high-rescue training can be done off of the tower."
In order to certify the Muscatatuck tower as a safe burn facility, three controlled burns had to be executed for 15 minutes which reached temperatures no lower than 300 degrees and no hotter than 1,000 degrees. These burns were done under controlled conditions in order to document exact temperatures and ensure that the fire would not spread to a part of the building it was not intended to.
"I think the training went very well," Lucas said. "We're a small staff here at the fire department and we had no problems with what we were doing today."
As a matter of fact, there was only one casualty during the training... a light fixture cover in an adjacent room got so hot that it melted completely, creating a modern work of plastic art which ran down the wall before solidifying again.
"The more training venues we have at Muscatatuck, the better our overall training will be for everybody," Kelsey added. "If somebody wants to train here, we'll figure out a way to make it happen. The burn tower adds immense value to what we have to offer."