A new fire rescue training facility has opened on property behind the Valle Ambulance District, 12363 Hwy. 21 north of De Soto.
The facility was a joint project for the De Soto Rural Fire Protection District, the De Soto Fire Department and the Hillsboro Fire Protection District, as well as the Valle Ambulance District, which donated the land to use for the facility.
John Scullin, spokesman for De Soto Rural Fire, said the entities began using it for basic training in October and live burns about a month after that. However, fencing and other final touches were still needed and were completed in December.
De Soto Rural Fire Chief Tom Fitzgerald said discussions about the facility started as far back as fall 2018.
At the time, the closest training facility in the area was in Festus near the Larry G. Crites Memorial Park, a 15-mile drive from the De Soto Rural District line. Due to the distance, it made it impossible for De Soto Rural to have their whole crew train at one time because it would leave no one available to respond to calls in their area during the training session. They needed a facility closer to home to train effectively, Fitzgerald said.
He said he brought up the idea of a new facility during a meeting with the chiefs from Hillsboro Fire and Valle Ambulance and both showed an interest in a joint project to make it more cost effective.
“Hillsboro’s fire chief (Brian Gaudet) said, ‘If we could put it in a closer location, I would be interested in sharing with you.’ And Chief (Jesse) Barton from Valle Ambulance was there, and he said they’ve got like eight or 10 acres at their site,” said Fitzgerald. “So that’s kind of how it got off the ground.”
After the initial conversation, Fitzgerald said he shared the idea with the De Soto Fire Department as well.
“We asked the city if they wanted to get on board and of course, who wouldn’t? If you can save money and have a state-of-the-art facility, it only makes sense.”
Fitzgerald said the pandemic and the economy delayed the project, but the districts eventually sought construction bids in the summer of 2021, and ground officially broke around May 2022.
Fitzgerald said the new approximately 3,000-square-foot facility is made out of shipping containers and sits on an acre of cleared ground. He said the total cost of the project, which included bulldozing and removing trees, putting down rock, pouring a foundation, purchasing the shipping containers and installing fencing, came in around $600,000.
Scullin said the 24-by-40-foot facility is three stories high, although the stories aren’t the same size.
The De Soto Rural Fire Protection District is paying 60 percent of the cost, and the De Soto Fire Department and the Hillsboro Fire Protection District each is covering 20 percent. Valle Ambulance provided the land.
“It was quite a project and by sharing, it makes it very financially manageable for each of the agencies,” Fitzgerald said. “We took out a loan and we all make payments, but we have the facility now to train on it instead of waiting to try to save up money for it,” Fitzgerald said.
Scullin said De Soto Rural Fire took out a loan for the cost, and all the entities are making payments to pay it off.
The facility has different training areas representing different types of structure fires. One area simulates a garage so firefighters can practice responding to a car fire inside a residential garage. Another area simulates a closed-room fire so they can practice responding to bedroom and living room fires. Another area is a fire behavior learning tool that allows firefighters to see fire growth and see how to control flow paths of smoke, gasses and heat during different scenarios, like opening windows, closing doors, opening vents or applying water.
Fitzgerald said the multi-use facility includes space for technical rescue, not just for burn training. There will be a place to practice rope rescue and repelling. There will be several “clean” areas where there will be no smoke or fire.
“In our planning process, we wanted to have something that the ambulance district could do without getting their equipment all smokey and nasty so they could do patient moving up and down the stairs and have different scenarios,” he said.
Fitzgerald said the reason a training facility is so important is that any skills they don’t practice on a regular basis start to fade.
“The more training we can get, the better we can help our new people coming in understand it and learn their skills. And it allows us who have been doing it for a while to hone those skills,” he said. “Maybe I haven’t used a ladder in a fire in a while but because I’m staying up on the training side, we won’t notice a performance difference.”
Fitzgerald also emphasized the need for additional volunteer firefighters.
He said De Soto Rural is about 25 volunteers short.
“I’ve got one big area, and for our Station 6 area on Hwy WW, which is actually a Dittmer area, I have zero volunteers. None.”
Scullin said the four entities that partnered to build the facility likely will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house to show it off to the public when the weather warms up.
“I think it’s a huge accomplishment to show our constituents that we’re trying to be really good stewards of the money,” Fitzgerald said.