The Iowa Fire Service Training Bureau now has a state-of-the-art training tower at Camp Dodge in Johnston.
State Fire Marshal Dan Brown’s office oversees the Training Bureau, which he says has been around for about 100 years. “During that one hundred year history, we’ve never had a permanent training facility like this, never had a permanent training facility at all. It’s been a long time in the making, it’s great for the Fire Service,” Brown says.
The training tower is four-stories, featuring a two-story residential/commercial unit and a one-story annex. “There’s two rooms in there we can burn in, do a live fire. Evolution, you know, search and rescue, confined space, training, repelling, high and low angle rescue, hose deployments, I mean the list the list goes on and on,” Brown says.
There’s also a place on the tower roof where firefighters can practice cutting holes. “Many times firefighters have to get up on the roofs and cut the roof open to let that smoke and heat out. And that’s definitely part of that training tower also,” Brown says
He says any department in the state can use the facility. “There’s a minimum training standard that fire departments need to follow around the state, and this definitely could be a part of that,” he says. You know, if they would want to have a time to come out with us and and train at our facility. We can definitely set that up.”
The Iowa Legislature gave the Iowa Fire Service Training Bureau $2.1 million dollars to build the tower and the Iowa Army National Guard provided the land.