HomeMy WebLinkAboutInvaluable TrainingThursday
July 28, 2005
Texas Municipal
Fire Training
School instructor
Robert Weiss
has been
teaching
firefighters for
the past 19
years and says
he often applies
his training
to real -world
situations.
Eagle photo
Dave McDermand
Eagle Staff Writer
Invaluable
training
Instructors say fire school gives
them the upper hand on the job
By HOLLY HUFFMAN
C y -Fair firefighter Mike Montgomery sal-
vaged a row of burning townhomes by shut-
ting off flaming gas valves — a technique he
learned at the Texas Municipal Fire Training
School in College Station.
Pasadena Fire Chief J.D. Gardner used proce-
dures he learned at the same school to help rescue
an injured worker who fell into a vessel at a plant
in Texas City.
Brenham firefighter Robert Weiss was taught
how to use foam to extinguish oil fires, expertise
he put to use when his department was called to an
oil well blaze sparked by a welder.
"We knew the training would work," said Mont-
gomery, 50, who also serves as Harris County fire
marshal. "We saw it as a challenge, but more
importantly, we saw it as a chance to apply what
we had learned and use it in the real world."
Montgomery, Gardner and Weiss are among 420
volunteer instructors schooling their counterparts
from 11 states at the Texas Engineering Extension
Service's annual municipal fire school this week.
This summer marks the 76th anniversary of the
municipal school at Brayton
Fire Training Field, billed as
the largest live - fueled fire
training facility in the world.
Three schools — Spanish,
Industrial and Municipal —
are held at the College Station
facility every July in back -to-
back, weeklong sessions. The
municipal school draws most-
ly volunteers, and this year is
boasting its largest attendance
— 2,425 firefighters — in more
than a decade.
Many of the students
become regulars at the school,
eager to return and learn the
latest in fire safety, and some
of the more dedicated go on to
become instructors. All are
quick to say the knowledge
gained at the school —
whether as students or return-
ing instructors — is invalu-
able.
"God, every bit of it," Refu-
gio Fire Chief Don Pullin said,
pausing to consider just how
much of his training he had
been able to apply to his daily
experience as a fire chief. "I
can't think of anything that
we have learned that we have
not put to use."
The 59- year -old said he has
been a firefighter since he was
8, when he started responding
to fires with his father — who
then was chief of the same
department he now leads. His
first trip to the College Station
fire school was in 1970, and he
attended the sessions another
18 to 20 times over the next 25
Instructor Mike Montgomery trains a line of
firefighters on how to put out a petroleum
fire Wednesday at Brayton Fire Training
years before becoming an
instructor in 1995. Now a safe-
ty officer, this is his 10th con-
secutive year as an instructor
at the school.
Pullin said his Refugio
h.,.....t often is called to
oil field and ranch accidents,
and many of his firefighters
hone their skills for such
responses during their week
of training at the school.
He recalled one traffic acci-
dent during last year's winter
snowstorm in which a car
overturned next to a tree and
a person was trapped under-
neath. The scenario was near-
ly identical to a simulation he
had trained on at Brayton, he
said.
"It just comes back to you,
how you're supposed to han-
dle it," said Pullin, who also
spent 30 years as a firefighter
for the Defense Department,
working with the Navy.
"When you get on scene and
something goes wrong, you
gotta get it under control.
That's when you go back to
your training."
More than 60,000 firefighters
are trained annually by fire
school instructors, TEEX offi-
cials said. Many are trained at
Brayton, but the school also
sends delegations of instruc-
tors to departments that can't
easily send personnel to Col-
lege Station. Instructors have
gone as far as Saudi Arabia,
Peru and Brazil, officials said.
"They're here because they
want to return something,"
said Mike Wisby, a TEEX pro-
gram manager, referring to
the municipal school's volun-
teer instructors. Most of them
take a week of vacation to
Eagle photo /Dave McDermand
Field. Montgomery, fire marshal for Harris
County, has served as an instructor at the
weeklong municipal fire school for 11 years.
teach for free at the school.
"It's a mission."
Weiss, a former chief of the
Brenham Fire Department and
a 26 -year fire service veteran,
attended the school for about
four years before becoming an
instructor. It's a post he has
held for nearly two decades.
The 52- year -old easily listed
skills that he has gained at the
school and applied to his vol-
unteer profession. He learned
how to use less water to pre-
vent water damage. He used
his rescue skills to help
retrieve a man who fell down
a hole. And he learned new
techniques for using the Jaws
of Life as car frames evolved
from metal to fiberglass, he
said.
Both Weiss and Gardner —
who has attended the school
for 22 years, first as a student
and then as an instructor —
said they sometimes are
approached by former stu-
dents who want to share a
story of how they used their
training.
It is working with those stu-
dents, Gardner said, that
makes his job rewarding.
As chief in Pasadena, Gard-
ner, 42, spends most of his
time behind a desk. So it is
rewarding to work hands -on
with firefighters, all of whom
are eager to attend the school
and learn new techniques to
share with their home depart-
ments, he said.
"To come out here and work
all week and sweat with the
students, it's just a great feel-
ing," he said.
• Holly Huffman's e-mail address
is holly.huffman@theeagle.com.