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Railcar Arrives To The Long Beach Fire Department Training Facility
By Jackawa Jackson | April 1, 2009
Long Beach Fire Department Regional Training Center
On March 31st The Long Beach Fire Department took ownership of a full size fuel tanker rail car to be used as training prop at the Long Beach Training Center.
The Long Beach Fire Department Regional Training Center is located in the heart of the City of Long Beach, California, 1 mile south of the Long Beach Airport. The 5 acre site is currently developing additional training props to enhance scenario-based training throughout the region. The training is also available for use by local city departments and community emergency response teams (CERT). Although the Training Center will be open to various agencies, traffic in the surrounding neighborhoods and inconvenience to residents will be at a minimum.
The enhancement to the training site is in response to the Homeland Security Presidential Directive to increase regional response capabilities to prevent, protect, respond to, and recover from domestic events or major disasters in our area of the country. These Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant funded projects will change the training capabilities to the Long Beach Fire Department for many years to come. The directive is focused on multi-jurisdictional response capabilities in multiple disciplines of public service and safety. The most current training props include:
- Hazardous Material Railcar– This decommissioned railcar was purchased, transported to Long Beach, and will be modified to simulate actual hazardous materials incidents that could be encountered during an accidental or domestic terrorist event involving rail transportation.
- MC306 Tanker – This flammable liquid tank car will be transported to the fire training site in the next few months. The tanker will be modified to simulate actual hazardous materials incidents that could be encountered during an accidental or domestic terrorist event on our highways. It also has the capability of rolling over using hydraulically operated tormentors to recreate actual incident scenarios.
- Search and Rescue Fire Simulator – This 2 story, 2880 square foot training simulator will provide extensive training in the areas of search and rescue under extreme conditions, firefighting, forcible entry, and barricaded suspects incidents.
- Collapse Prop – This training simulator will provide local city departments, CERT, and regional Urban Search And Rescue (USAR) fire assets the opportunity to train under realistic conditions. This collapse simulator will incorporate several different structural collapse scenarios to enhance safe rescue and recovery from natural disasters or a domestic terrorist attack.
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