CANNONSBURG — If you were traveling near the intersection of U.S. 60 and Ky. 180 on Saturday morning, you may have noticed a lot of emergency vehicles parked on the shoulder of the road, near a small, green building that had smoke pouring out of it.
It was a structure fire, to be sure, but, unlike most such incidents, this one was actually beneficial — to the owner of the property and to the firefighters who were battling it.
Under the auspices of the Kentucky Fire Rescue Training program, the building, located next to the Cannonsburg Wendy’s, was used for a “live burn” training exercise in which 28 firefighters from a half-dozen area departments participated.
The low-roofed one-story structure once housed a business that once housed a boat dealership. It had been vacant for some time and had deteriorated to the point where it had become a serious eyesore.
Dave Varney of Kenova, who recently purchased the property to use as a site for one of his touchless automatic car washes, approached the Cannonsburg Fire Department about burning down the building for him. The department was glad to oblige, Chief Richard Cyrus said.
“We’re always happy when we can get something like this for free,” he said.
According to Cyrus, Cannonsburg’s fire training tower has a “burn room” that is designed to simulate conditions inside a burning building. However, there’s simply no substitute for hands-on experience with the real thing, he said.
“This allows to see how fire behaves in a real structure,” he said. “They can see how it progresses from room to room. There’s no way to simulate that.”
The exercise also allowed firefighters to gain experience in the incident command — where a single individual, Cyrus in this case, is designated to call all the shots — and accountability systems, Cyrus said.
The KFRT program, in which Cyrus is an instructor, does about 20 to 25 house burns a year, Cyrus said. The most recent one prior to Saturday’s was in Louisa, he said.
Under National Fire Protection Association rules, the building had to be stripped bare before it was set on fire to ensure there was nothing in it that would give off toxic smoke. All the shingles had to be removed from the roof.
Also, firefighters could not use any type of chemical accelerants to start the fire, so they used a propane torch to light piles of hay and wooden pallets that had been placed inside the building.
Varney, who currently owns car washes in Catlettsburg and Proctorville, said he appreciated the fire departments getting rid of the building for him. He said he planned to make a contribution to Cannonsburg’s firefighters fund, since he was spared the cost of having to hire a contractor to demolish the structure.
He said he hoped to begin construction on the new car wash by early June and have it open by this fall.
In addition to Cannonsburg, departments that participated in Saturday’s exercise were East Fork, Westwood, Summit-Ironville, Grayson and Louisa.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.
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