ATLANTA — Officials with the Atlanta Fire Rescue Department say they have been losing firefighters and recruits because their training facilities are outdated and inadequate.
Some of the buildings they showed Channel 2′s Tyisha Fernandes have been condemned.
The department doesn’t have a space to train new recruits on big trucks.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
They can’t just use a vacant parking lot because the pavement is too thin for heavy trucks.
The department used to use an abandoned school as a training site, but the city closed it because something in the building was making fire recruits ill.
“We have not been able to train our members to the level they need to be trained to safely operate in a dangerous environment related to fire,” Atlanta Fire Rescue Chief Rod Smith said.
There are plans to fix that problem with the new public safety training facility that will eventually be built in DeKalb County.
Chief Smith believes that people who are against the project don’t realize if it’s not built it will have a huge impact on the fire department.
“There’s a lot of negative press going on, there’s ‘Stop Cop City’ the whole nine yards, but this is truly an effort for us to save our city and protect our city,” Smith said.
Chief Smith took Channel 2 on a tour of an abandoned elementary school where recruits have trained for the last 70 years.
TRENDING STORIES:
- Midtown Atlanta crane collapse damages building, 4 people injured
- Ex-Atlanta police officer will spend next decade in prison for his role in 2019 armed robbery
- Police investigating officer-involved shooting in Brookhaven
The city condemned the school and a tower about a mile away because the tower was built in 1960 and it’s just too old now.
It was used to train firefighters to go into high-rise buildings, but the tower just doesn’t resemble them anymore.
The department bought another structure for that training, but it is only good for the next 9 years.
“It is absolutely embarrassing for us to hire members to come in and say you’re gonna work for the biggest, you’re gonna work for the best, and then bring them into somewhere like here,” Smith said.
For a while, recruits had to go to other counties to train, but they can’t do that anymore.
So the fire department is hoping people can look at the new public safety training facility through a different lens - not as something just built for police.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
IN OTHER NEWS:
©2022 Cox Media Group
