Smoke Rising from Farmington Avenue Buildings Was Part of Firefighter Training

If you saw smoke and heard commotion at the former Whitman Restaurant and surrounding houses on Route 4 over the past month, you needn't be alarmed.

The Farmington Fire Department's career and volunteer firefighters have been training in the buildings, which are slated to be demolished to make way for a Mormon temple, according to Mary-Ellen Harper, the town's director of fire and rescue services. The training ended Thursday night.

The department also photographed and video recorded the trainings to demonstrate the need for a live fire training facility. The Town Planning and Zoning Commission approved a proposal to put a training center for firefighters on Round Hill Road behind the town's sewage treatment plant and near the police firing range.

The department is in the process of raising money for the project and $1 million total is needed to build the facility, Harper said. Fire officials are hoping to raise the funds by July 2014. No other towns have officially signed on to use the future Farmington training facility, but the Avon Volunteer Fire Department is trying to raise funds to buy into it, Harper confirmed.

The United States Department of Labor's Occupational Safety & Health Administration requires firefighters to train "on the skills they regularly perform," Harper said. The town of Farmington employs eight full-time career firefighters and has 175 volunteers, Harper said.

The recent training in the former Whitman Restaurant and five Farmington Avenue houses scheduled to be demolished involved breaking windows, generating smoke in containers filled with wood pallets and hay to simulate the smoke from a fire, practicing ventilating smoke from the buildings, forcing entry and other techniques used to stop a fire, according to Harper. They also practiced search and rescue, locating mannequins and dragging them out of the buildings.

“Those are things you can’t do in a normal structure," she said.