Special Delivery Alan M. Petrillo
The Bentonville (AR) Fire Department has an unusual assortment of buildings, structures, and industrial facilities in its coverage area.
The city is home to Walmart headquarters, warehouses, and distribution centers as well as the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, NorthWest Arkansas Community College, and apartment complexes seven to nine stories tall.
Justin Scantlin, Bentonville’s chief, says that the fire department didn’t have a training facility that could prepare firefighters for the potential scenarios they might face, so the department received approval from the city to build a training facility that would mimic the various situations firefighters might encounter. “We traveled around and looked at a number of different types of training facilities,” Scantlin says, “and ultimately decided to go with Fire Facilities and a five-story tower with a traditional switchback staircase that is similar to what we find in many of our town’s multistory structures. We also wanted an additional section that could mimic a residential structure and also a Class A burn structure.”
Scantlin continues, “We also wanted an outside staircase that’s a different pitch from the tower stairway to give us as much versatility as possible to reflect what we find in various parts of town. We also wanted narrower hallways that would reflect what we see in our residential construction.”
1 Fire Facilities built this 7,860-square-foot five-story fire training tower for the Bentonville (AR) Fire Department. [Photos courtesy of the Bentonville (AR) Fire Department.]
2 Firefighters train on a propane burn prop on the second floor of the tower.
Zach Willard, general manager of Fire Facilities, says Bentonville chose his company’s Commissioner model of training tower that has five stories, a residential section, and a burn room annex. “Bentonville’s tower is a good example of how you can have lots of functionality in a big tower,” Willard points out. “We figured out how we could customize the tower and put in more features for them without increasing the size.”
Willard says that Bentonville’s training facility is 7,860 square feet with 12 burn rooms on the first, second, and third floors of the complex. “All of the burn rooms are fitted with propane gas fixtures that were developed by Symtech Fire,” he notes, “and two of the burn spaces in the annex can handle Class A fires.”
Some of the props that are embedded in the fire training facility include a garage and vehicle prop, a kitchen fire simulator, a kitchen cabinet extension that sits above the burn prop and makes the conflagration larger, a hallway fire rollover simulator, a queen bed burn prop on the second floor, an