City of Rockwall, TX - Fire Department, Training Needs

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A training facility would allow the members of the department to conduct more training locally, which would enhance their safety and improve their ability to have local new recruit training. Having a local training facility would also contribute to the further lowering of the ISO rating.

Fire Department Training Facility

Under the ISO rating schedule, the fire department is required to have training/ drills in the areas of multi-company drills, single company drills, and nighttime drills. The drills consist of (8) single company half-day drills, (4) multi-company half-day drills, (2) single company 4 hour night time drills and (2) multi-company four hour night time drills.
When looking at training issues, several things have to be considered.

The proposed training facility would be required to have

a five story drill tower
three story live fire burn house
LP gas trainer, fire extinguisher training pit
confined space trainer
350’ X 350’ driving paving for driver training
50’ X 50’ class A fuel storage building
1500 square foot shaded outside classroom
water pump and storage facility
burn ancillary
drafting pit
underground water piping
68 car parking lot
40’ X 40’ warehouse project building
50 person classroom.

Listed below are the areas in the ISO rating, which give credit to the citizens under a training facility conducting the required single/multi-company drills. We have information to support that if the city built a training facility with the items listed above, this would be a significant step in lowering the current ISO rating by 1 point. The cost of this project is currently listed at approximately 8.5 million. The savings of 1 point on the ISO rating is approximately 6.8% of a homeowner’s insurance premium, which on a $100,000.00 new home is equivalent to 6.8 cents per $100.00 value.

If the Rockwall Fire Department had a training facility, the city would be credited 8 points for a drill tower
8 points for a fire building
5 points for a combustible pit
2 points for a library and training manuals
2 points for slide projector/hydrant cut away/pump cut away
and 10 points for a training area to include driving course/hose lays/hose deployment/LPG training/ confined space training/etc.

When calculating the use of the training facility, one multiplies the point credit for facilities and adds the following factors for the use of the facilities and also adds the number of company members receiving the training. The multiplying factor is 0.40 for the 8 single company half-day drills, 0.40 for the 4-multi company half-day drills, and 0.20 for the 2 single company 4 hour night time drill and 2 multi company four hour night time drills. A total of 25 points can be received for completing 20 hours of company classroom training per year. These points are received as follows: 15 points for 16 hours a year for all officer class training, 2 points for 16 hours driver/operator training using existing equipment and personnel, 2 points for 40 hours of driver training of new driver/operator training, 1 point for 4 hours of radioactivity training, and 5 points for 240 hours of recruit training.
The RFD would have 1280 hours of single company drills for forty firefighters, 640 hours multi company drill for forty firefighters, 320 hours night time drills for forty firefighters, 800 hours of classroom training for forty firefighters, 192 hours of officer training for twelve officers, 640 hours of driver training for forty firefighters, 160 hours of radioactivity training for 40 firefighters, 200 hours of new driver training for 5 firefighters, and 1200 hours for new recruit training for five firefighters. This is a total of 5272 total training hours per year.
What are the benefits to the citizens, firefighters, homeowners, and business owners? This would allow the Rockwall Fire Department to conduct more training locally for the firefighters, which would enhance their safety and improve their ability to have local new recruit training program. By enhancing the firefighters training, this also enhances citizens’ safety, property conservation for homeowners and business by cutting fire losses, and would lower the insurance rating on the homes and business by lowering the ISO rating for the City of Rockwall.
When comparing training at our facility as opposed to using outside sources we must consider two factors. One is the cost and the second is not depleting our services by more that fifty percent. Under the ISO requirements, we must use our equipment and manpower to do the required single and multi-company training drills. If we take our pumper trucks, ladder truck, or our manpower and leave the city limits, we must not deplete our minimum staffing requirements, minimum pumping capacity, or deplete our ladder truck companies by more that 50%. We have one ladder truck at the cost of $533,000.00 when it was new and today it would cost close to $860,000.00. The fire department does not have a reserve ladder truck, so if it left the City, the services would be depleted by more that 50% unless we purchased a second one. We have the pumping capacity of 3500 GPM but we only have 1500 GPM in reserve pumping capacity. In order to do multi- company drills with the pumpers and existing staffing, the services would be depleted by more that 50%.
The consequences of depleting the services by more that 50% are jeopardizing lives, jeopardizing property and actually costing the citizens a larger penalty in the ISO rating. The penalty for depleting services by more that 50% is higher than the penalty for not doing the training. When discussing an outside source for training we must note that we would have to take our personnel and equipment out of the city to do the training, unless it was specialized training which did not require the pumpers and ladder truck.
Currently the volunteers attend specialized training at Texas A & M University in College Station twice a year. They offer specialized training in over 35 course categories at the billion-dollar Brayton Fire Training Field. We can rent the field on weekends at a cost of $ 2,500.00 for two days. The maximum number of students would be 25 per day.
Outside Training Sources: We can send firefighters to Collin County Community College for training at their 10 million dollar facility on weekends at a cost of $40.00 per hour per student, if we furnish the instructors and a minimum of 9 students. It would cost $80.00 an hour if they furnished them.
We can send firefighters to Dallas Fire Department training facility on the weekends as long as they have instructors, which are willing to work overtime. It takes six instructors for a class of 15 students and the cost is $60.00 per hour per instructor. That figures out to $24.00 per hour per student.
Training Factors: The wind speed and direction must be within certain requirements for live fire training.
Cost of Outside Training: If we took the total number of training hours, which is 5272 hours, and we multiplied it by $24.00 per hour, we would spend $126,528.00 per year on training at outside facilities plus we would have to spend approximately one million on more equipment so we were not depleting the equipment by more than 50%. This would still leave us with the issue of how we do multi-company drills by taking all the volunteers out of the city to train and still not deplete services by 50%.
Savings provided by local training facility: Currently we budget $20,000.00 total for specialized training outside of the department. If we build the training facility we would still send the firefighters to the specialized training at a cost of $20,000.00.