PALMER TOWNSHIP — The Palmer Municipal Fire Department wants to open a joint training facility with Palmer Township Police at Riverview Park off Lehigh Drive.
Township police already have a shooting range in the area. There is open land west of the range that could be used for the building.
The project is still in the very early stages, said Township Fire Commissioner Stephen Gallagher, but the concrete structure will be about four stories high so firefighters can “simulate high-rise building rescues.”
Palmer holds about five hands-on practice sessions at the Whitehall Township firefighter training facility each year. The 30-minute travel time to Whitehall and sharing the facility with other departments, makes scheduling difficult, township officials said.
In addition, Palmer firefighters need to schedule training in multiple shifts. They can’t all go at the same time because that would leave the township uncovered in case of an emergency, Gallagher said.
“If we have our own property we don’t have to worry about breaking it out into shifts. It creates better logistics for us,” Gallagher said.
The fire department also practices using buildings that are slated to be torn down, but such opportunities are infrequent. Most recently, firefighters trained at the former Bimbo Bakery before it was torn down and recently trained at the former ITT building on Charlotte Avenue.
The idea for the firefighter training facility was first presented to the Palmer Board of Supervisors in April.
The supervisors “gave their blessing,” , allowing the fire department to move forward with drawing up plans for where the training facility would be located and what the building specifications would be, said Supervisor David Colver, who also serves as a liaison between the fire department and supervisors.
It’s too early to determine how much the building would cost.
The fire department already has received approvals from the State Department of Environmental Protection and the Environmental Protection Agency to build at Riverview Park. Now the department needs to determine how to move forward with developing building plans and construction.
The fire department had been in discussion with Lafayette College about having students design and construct the facility as part of a class project, but the discussion has yet to produce a definitive plan, Gallagher said.
Gallagher hopes the structure will have a special roof that will allow firefighters to practice ventilating a building. The roof would be pitched like a typical single-family home, but it would be made entirely of concrete, except for a small cut-out section where firefighters could install plywood that they could practice cutting to ventilate the structure.
“When a building fills up with gases, heat and smoke it’s hard for us to see when we go into that situation,” Gallagher explained. Venting a roof helps clear some of that smoke, making it easier for firefighters to navigate.
Classroom time is also part of training, but for now it appears classroom training would continue to take place at the Palmer Township fire station, Colver said.
