By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
As temperatures soared into the 60s this past weekend, a planned burn of an abandoned home became a spectator event.
The City and Town of Burlington, as well as Lyons, Rochester and Burlington Area Rescue Squad, got in several rounds of training – as well as a few unexpected calls – Sunday at a home located between Fox River Plaza and Miller Motors.
Starting at about 7:30 a.m., the various units were briefed and separated into teams, and then took turns at attacking a fire from several different training positions.
City of Burlington Fire Chief Alan Babe called the training “invaluable.”
“When you can do live fire training like that, it’s as close to the real thing as you’re gonna get,” Babe said. “It was awesome.”
Chris Miller of Miller Motors acquired the home and let the fire department use it for training starting in the fall of last year. However, the decision to bring the house down was made in late January.
It was posted to the City of Burlington’s Facebook page last week that the house would be coming down, and Babe had reason to expect a crowd.
“Megan (Watkins, the city’s director of administrative services) had warned me that as of Wednesday night, there had been 9,000-odd views,” Babe said.
Hundreds were gathered at some points during the day for the planned burn, though many had left by the time the departments let the fire become fully involved.
Even that was a training exercise, of sorts. With transformers located near the home, Babe said the departments worked hard to keep the fire away from that end of the home, working with water and temperature equipment to ensure no residents would lose power.
Babe added that the house fell in on itself as planned, and once the fire was confined in the home’s basement, a skeleton crew remained until it burned itself out.
However, the training fire wasn’t the only excitement of the day. In addition to getting several rescue squad calls – squad members were picked up on site by a driver in the other department ambulance – a car fire call came in shortly after 3 p.m.
As it turned out, the department didn’t have far to go. A 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle caught fire in the parking lot at the Kwik Trip on Falcon Ridge Drive.
“We noticed some smoke coming from the Kwik Trip parking lot, but it was white smoke,” Babe said. Almost as soon as they noticed the smoke, the alert system sounded off, and Babe put together a crew of six to respond with the one engine that had been left free on site.
The response time was about a minute, and while the car was well on fire by the time the crew arrived, the fire was away from the pumps.
“Pretty fortunate,” Babe said about having the crew nearby, adding that it may have kept the car from being destroyed.
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