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The New O’Cady’s Rises From The Ashes Of The Old
By Jackawa Jackson | July 13, 2009
On the morning of June 23, The Long Beach Fire Department began live fire training in its newest grant-funded prop. 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. The simulator itself is made from steel shipping containers and concrete and is designed to resemble a large two story single-family dwelling. This simulator took the place of the previous single story burn prop which had come to be known as the O’ Cadys. The new simulator is vastly superior due to the limited amount of combustibles required to build very real interior fires as well as the short amount of time required to get the prop back in service for the next training group. In the fire service, training with actual fires, not simulated, is a necessity. Whether our men and women are called upon to search a burning floor for victims, launch an aggressive interior attack on a structure fire, or pull one of our own downed firefighters to safety, they must be prepared to work under the most hostile conditions imaginable.
This new prop is the newest edition to the Long Beach Fire Departments Regional Training Facility. The 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).
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 of 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.
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