Dark smoke was billowing into the blue sky, orange flames were licking what was left of the roof and, according to Bill Pfeifer, things could not have been going better.
“It's doing exactly what we need it to. It's burning the roof from end to end so we can come down and light it. It'll be like a big black chimney,” said Pfeifer, a Grand Island-based training instructor with the Nebraska Fire Marshall's Office.
The training exercise well underway, Pfeifer took a moment to snap a few pictures of the tan, two-story farm house about four miles northeast of Beatrice as the flames slowly consumed it late Sunday morning. A few firefighters in blackened gear stood by drinking bottled water while others waited in teams of two to go in. By about 1:30 p.m., the house, which was donated by the owner for training purposes, would be a smoking pile of charred wood.
By the time the airhorn sounded the call for evacuation about a half hour before that, 32 firefighters from nine departments, with the help of eight instructors, had gone into the house to practice fighting fires set on all three levels of the house. For some, it was their first experience fighting a live fire inside of a real house. For others, it was a good opportunity to practice.
“It's as close as we can get it (to a real-life emergency),” said Beatrice Fire and Rescue Capt. Brian Daake, who is also a part-time instructor for the State Fire Marshall's Training Division. “It provides valuable experience for everybody.”
Several aspects of Sunday were different from an emergency situation; Everybody was on scene as the fires were set and had a chance to walk through the house and familiarize themselves with the layout beforehand. The fires were set using wood pallets and straw, producing a lighter color of smoke than the kind found at most house fires, where furniture and the petroleum-based products in the home burn darker and hotter.
Still, the smoke was thick enough to make things difficult, and the fire still burns plenty hot - between 1,500 and 2,000 degrees near the top of a room, 200 to 300 near the bottom - depending on the location of a room and the material the fire is burning.
“It's just a black, hot, dirty environment,” said Andy Fournel of Palmyra, another part-time instructor who helped run the exercise.
And while nothing unexpected happened Sunday, the old house had its peculiarities, just like any other burning structure. With unusually low ceilings, the top-floor rooms got hot fast, as did the basement with its paneled walls.
“I learn something new at every fire,” Daake said. “Each one has its quirks.”
The sturdy ground level of the house also allowed it to stay together longer, giving some of the firefighters a chance to go in more than once to gain the experience that may help save a life when the real thing happens and the instructors aren't there.
Daake said departments depend on old donated houses for that kind of training, which can't really be simulated any other way.
“On-the-job training for firefighters is just not the way to do it,” he said.