Fire and Smoke All Part of Fairhope Firefghter Training

FAIRHOPE, Ala.
By Rick McCann

Blue RAM Media
March 30, 2025

Smoke could be seen floating over parts of Fairhope Saturday afternoon, but firefighters weren’t battling a blaze at a home or trying to extinguish a large woods fire but rather, they were starting fires at a home that was prepared specifically for training.

The 1970s-era home on Blue Island Avenue was donated to the fire department and became the classroom for the Fairhope firefighters who ran through several training scenarios and put them front and center in the middle of different types of fires.

This real-life, hands-on training prepares firefighters for what they might face at any time.

Fires are hot, sometimes very intense, dark and even scary.
These real-life drills are skills that can’t be taught by PowerPoint, in a classroom. You must see it, feel it and understand what fire is, how it breathes and how it lives. This type of training is vitally important in order to stay alive at a fire scene.

Firefighters made their way inside the fiery rooms and down hallways performing different tasks, while fire did, what does. Fire intensifies, grows, and gobbles up the oxygen so that it can live.
Knowing the type of construction that was used in the building of the structure helps a firefighter to understand where the fire must be hiding or how the fire is growing or why the fire is so hot or the smoke so black.
In today’s homes there’s a lot of laminates and plastics, different types of building materials that can make the fire burn faster, hotter and longer.

Eventually the house met its finally demise as the house came down and, pushed back by a bulldozer as the homeowner stood by, her memories now all that’s left.

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