BOISE - For decades, the Boise Fire Department has complained that it didn't have an adequate training facility. But after years of planning, that's about to change.
"This has been a dream of mine for the last 10 years to try to get this facility for us," said Boise Fire Chief Dennis Doan.
The ribbon cutting for the new state-of-the-art fire training facility is this Friday, but KTVB got a first look inside the new facility today.
This new facility is made up of four buildings and is meant to help prepare firefighters for everything and anything.
The $12.5 million project is a major upgrade from the old facility.
With lives on the line every day, training is essential for fire departments.
For the first time in decades, Boise Fire says this training facility will meet all of its needs.
There are four buildings. Two are used to simulate fires. One is set up like a home where they set real wood-burning fires.
"We'll simulate a couch fire or a bedroom fire or a kitchen fire in here, and as the firefighters arrive they have to look and try to read the smoke and decide which way they're going to make entry, and they can pull the hose lines in here and practice knocking the fire down," said Doan.
Firefighters will also be able to train with real fire in the tower, which is controlled by natural gas. Each floor offers a different scenario - like a storefront, apartments, office building and even a hotel. It has features like moveable walls to change floor plans and anchors to practice rappelling.
“This is a forceable entry door, we can change out the locks, and from the outside we can practice how we're going to breach a door to gain access into a business or a home,” said Doan.
The other two buildings house administration and a place for recruits going through the academy.
“Here is a one-stop shop,” said Doan.
And Doan says it's a dream compared to the old facility and its slew of problems like a deteriorating fire tower that didn't even replicate modern buildings and hadn't been able to utilize real fire since the 1970s.
“The only way we can get live fire training right now is if somebody donates us a home or a business and we can do training in that, and that's few and far between,” said Doan.
Making this new training facility a game changer where training with live fire will be routine all the time.
“We don't want the first time a firefighter fights a fire is in somebody's home, we want them to be excellent at their craft, and our firefighters are excellent but this is going to take them to the next level and make our city even more safe,” said Doan.
The training facility was paid for through a bond voters passed back in 2014.