First responders head to CEI to check out new training tower

Training. It’s an important job for any first responder. But sometimes practicing things like rappelling, ladder operations and more can be hard to do.

“Most of the time it’s something that may be two-stories tall, max,” said Jerry Holenbeck, the fire divisions chief for the Idaho National Laboratory. “It’s difficult.”

But thanks to a three-story mobile training tower, that worry is long gone.

First responders from around the state got the chance to use the portable training simulator firsthand.

“There is an old saying in the fire service; train like you fight and fight like you train,” said Scot McGuire, the testing coordinator for College of Eastern Idaho. “The more experience they get doing these kinds of things, the better off they are when it comes to the real time to do it.”

At first look, the training tower looks like a regular trailer, but within minutes, it stands up into a three-story tower.

“It’ll do rope rescue, it’ll do confined space rescue, it’ll do standpipe operations, which is in all of your hotels,” McGuire said. “You have the ability to charge pipes up through stairwells, it’ll also do rappelling off the roof. It has certified anchor points inside and on the roof. It will do smoke training for stairway searches and exercise. There’s actually a lot it’ll do, I didn’t even list it all.”

The tower is wind-load rated at 55 mph

“Which it has a safety factor of 1.5, which means a burst of 75 mph (winds) would not turn it over,” said Tripp Joiner, the mechanical engineer for Mobile Training Towers.

To test out just how well the portable tower works, some of the first responders rappelled off of the side.

“This is one of those things that you can’t recreate when you teach at other academies,” Holenbeck said.

Once training is over, the tower is back on its side on the trailer in minutes.

But there is still one thing left to discuss.

“(The first responders) are already talking about who gets it first and what departments,” McGuire said. “It will be traveling all over the state.”