Originally Posted by
Keith Tindell
Shaun, here in the UK . the premier fire training establishment for civilians as well as the regular fire service, is in Morton-in Marsh Gloucester. They are geared up for pretty much any scenario. In the case of ship fire fighting they have a full size concrete ship in a dock, several decks deep. The exercises carried out involves loading huge amounts of timber in the lower area of this ship and lighting up. Crews have then to enter via the top deck and pulling hoses with them in BA lift the hatches and decent each deck to put the fire out. The heat is tremendous as you would imagine. There are escape doors at various levels in case anyone gets into trouble, and they frequently do. I attended the 6 week BA instructors course, and in that 6 weeks an ambulance had to be called twice, mainly to deal with heat exhaustion . This site is on an old wartime airfield, and there are concrete high rise buildings, dummy aircraft, etc etc. Many foreign Fire Services are sent to Moreton, usually for their senior officer training, kt