Hands-on education in the nature of fire
Stow academy prepares recruits for departments across state
(Globe Staff / George Rizer)
At the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy in Stow, recruits work at various stations during training; recruit Paul Kadilak of Burlington (left) advances towards fire in liquefied natural gas pit.
STOW - On a sweltering day earlier this month, Wayland firefighter Tim Dempsey was decked out in full working gear, engaged in chores that normally would be the stuff of dull routine.
But Dempsey was not at the firehouse. He was in training at the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy in Stow, and the pressure was on. Dempsey was attaching hose nozzles, swapping out his air mask, and choosing the right tools for the job from a pile of implements - while wearing a blackout mask. He could not see a thing.
Dempsey spent 14 years working in the technology department at emergency services provider American Medical Response in Natick before being laid off three years ago, and joining the Wayland Fire Department as a call firefighter. This spring, at age 37, he was one of the older cadets in his class of 72 trainees, who varied in age from 20 to 48. All faced a full range of firefighting duties under the watchful eyes of instructors. At the academy, cadets manage live building fires, face natural gas explosions, and perform mundane tasks in extraordinary circumstances.
"Very rarely do you do the same thing twice, because they don't want you to think it's ever going to be the same thing. They like to throw a curve at you," Dempsey said.
Dempsey and the rest of his training class graduated last week, joining the nearly 300 newly hired fire cadets who go through the academy every year. He characterized the 12-week training course as grueling and thrilling, but a sacrifice of time away from his wife and three children. "There's a great mix of physical activity, lecture time, and guest speakers," Dempsey said.
"If you ask my family, it's been time-consuming. My friends don't know where I disappeared to. I put everything else on hold. Home life took a hit with the academy part."
Among his classmates were trainees from nearly four dozen departments. Over the years, cadet training has lengthened from six to 12 weeks.
"As time has gone on, and as the job of a firefighter has become more complex, the need for increased hours of recruit training has been very evident," said Stephen D. Coan, the state fire marshal and head of the Department of Fire Services, which runs the training academy.
There are 23,000 working firefighters in Massachusetts, about half of whom are full-time, with the rest volunteer or on-call. Instructors at the academy are working firefighters drawn from a number of communities, the idea being that they can pass on some of the lessons they've learned working fires in their own cities and towns.
Course work at the academy, established in 1971, places an emphasis on safety - for the cadet, for fellow firefighters, and for the community. Specialized skills are taught to ensure each graduate knows how to do the job - extract victims of car accidents, attach a hose to a hydrant, fight a fire - and how to do so together with members of their departments.
In addition to quarterly recruit training, academy instructors travel around the state offering more than 1,000 training, educational, and enrichment courses to emergency workers every year. The state began a three-year construction and renovation project at the academy's 50-acre site in Stow last year that will provide a new Department of Fire Services headquarters, vehicle maintenance facility, and storage warehouse.
New recruits from every city and town are allowed to attend the academy without charge, although Boston, Worcester, Springfield, and Quincy have their own facilities and generally do not send cadets to Stow for training, said Jennifer Mieth, spokeswoman for the Department of Fire Services. "But their firefighters and fire officers take advantage of many of our other training programs," she said.
The communities that do send trainees to Stow receive the benefit of a state's worth of experience. "Seventy-two individuals come in Day One. Some may know each other, but for the most part they are coming into an environment they know little about, and when they leave there they have created a very solid team," Coan said.
Perhaps the most specialized lessons taught to recruits concern the use of protective gear. The subject is introduced in a lecture on the "nature of fire," preparing trainees to understand, and hopefully predict, the behavior of fires. But classroom learning is only a small fraction of the training. Most is hands-on, in the very face of fire, created and controlled in facilities constructed to mimic real-world conditions.
"As teams of new firefighters, under very strict supervision of trained instructors, they are introduced to live fire in a sequential manner, from small one-room fires, extension fires, building fires, and so on," Coan said.
Cadets wait at a simulated firehouse until signaled by radio, when they gear up and respond to the training exercise as shaped by instructors. Every cadet has a role for each fire, and their role is changed for the next drill. For one, a cadet may take the nozzle and attack the fire directly. In subsequent drills, the trainee might ride the firetruck's ladder to the rooftop, or serve on rescue duty, scouring the scene for dummy victims.
"It's a playbook. Everyone has a particular job," Coan said, explaining that the cadets are trained to function as members of a "paramilitary" team.
Once a fire is extinguished - usually less than 20 minutes after the alarm is sounded - the cadets clean up, drink some water, and get ready to do it again. On June 9, in 95 degree weather, the cadets performed four such drills before lunch.
"Today is pretty much extreme conditions," said John Kennedy, a fire lieutenant from Worcester and an academy instructor.
Although in the real world, firefighters "don't have the luxury to say when we have a fire," Kennedy said between drills, "we do take into consideration that these are training burns. So we're going to be taking a slow pace today because of the conditions. We'd rather have good training fires and have them learn something," he said, than beat on them "until they don't even want to be here."
"It does a number on you, but they take pretty good care of you," Dempsey said. "In the real world it's a lot tougher, but they prepare you as well as they can."
John M. Guilfoil can be reached at jguilfoil@globe.com.
