The city of Festus had the house it bought next to the City Hall and Police Station complex torn down this week.
The city bought the house, 657 W. Main St., in March with plans to eventually use it for parking.
Demolition began on Monday and was expected to be complete by the week.
The city of Festus is demolishing the house at 657 W. Main St. to use for more parking.
In the weeks leading up to the demolition project, the Festus Fire Department used the house for training purposes.
Chief Jeff Broombaugh said having access to the building allowed for simulation training with props not normally available to his department.
“It’s not every day we get a house to work with,” he said.
At one of the training sessions on Aug. 8, the department’s firefighters said they appreciated having a real house for training.
“This is as close as we get to a real-world experience,” Capt. Brian Schlichting said. “For this training, we’re going to make a vertical ventilation in the house. The guys will get a chain saw to cut a hole in the roof of the house.”
The vertical ventilation is designed to remove heat and smoke from the building, said Shannon Peters, the department’s training officer.
“We can use the house to break down a door or breach a wall. We can train to find a downed firefighter or occupant of the house,” Schlichting added.
He said every Festus firefighter trained at the house while it was available to the department from about mid-July to mid-August.
“Everybody on A, B and C shift, our part-timers and volunteers have trained here,” Schlicting said.
Firefighters, in full gear, spent part of the morning on Aug. 8 climbing ladders to get on the roof. Once there, they used ropes to haul up power saws and other equipment and then began sawing through the roof.
Peters said Festus firefighters trained at the structure often and in a variety of ways. The many holes in the walls and ceilings inside the house attested to that fact.
“We’ve been using the house pretty much every day for the last month,” Peters said. “We did some hose load deployment to simulate a basement fire. We’ve practiced for searching for hidden fire in a building that has lath and plaster. Lath and plaster are in older types of construction. They’re harder to get through than modern drywall.”
During the week of Aug. 11, the training included practice for a basement rescue.
“(We did) a drill trying to get a downed firefighter out of a basement,” Schlicting said. “You do that by cutting a hole in the floor or utilizing the hole they may have fallen through.”
Peters and Broombaugh said Festus invited other firefighting agencies to use the house for training, and firefighters from the Crystal City and Herculaneum departments and the Mapaville and Hematite fire protection districts spent some time training there.
The Festus City Council agreed in February to buy the house on a .72-acre lot and closed on the purchase on March 26 with the intent of adding parking spaces for City Hall and the Police Station, 711 W. Main St. The city paid $169,000 to buy the property from Reo Xpress after the house had been repossessed and determined to be uninhabitable, City Administrator Greg Camp said.
On June 10, the City Council agreed to pay Exterior Creations in Festus $23,900 to demolish the house, adding a provision to spend up to $38,000 for tree removal and/or asbestos abatement.
Michelle Vaughn, the city’s finance director, said Tuesday that no asbestos abatement was needed but several trees had to be removed, adding $8,000 to the project cost, for a total of $31,900.
Vaughn said the city will solicit bids for the parking lot project sometime in the future.