On Wednesday night May 1st members of East Brandywine Volunteer Fire Company traveled to South Coatesville to the Chester County Public Safety Training Center Burn Building for a live burn drill. The Burn Building is a two and a half story building that looks like a row of seven town homes. It features eight rooms on the lower and upper levels and much more. The building in set up in a way to simulate as close to a real experience for the firefighters as possible.

The members spent several hours at the training center running through numerous fire evolution's that included fires on the first floor, basement, second floor and fires in multiple locations of the building at the same time.

It wasn't just our interior firefighters getting practice either, we had approx. 8 other members that consisted of junior firefighters and members who weren't interior certified yet honing their skills as well. Work on the exterior of a fire building is just as critical as the work going on inside of it. One of those jobs is placing ground ladders around all sides of the building so that the interior firefighters have a means of rapid egress if needed and also allows the exterior members to gain access to windows and the roof for ventilation.

Some of our new members also got to experience putting on the full turnout gear plus airpacks and going inside the building while on fire. One of those members was Katie Barrett Karnis who said "It was my first time experiencing a live burn, smelling the smoke, feeling the heat and seeing the flames, and as soon as I stepped outside I couldn't wait to experience it again! Captain PJ Groff was great at letting me know what to expect and talking me through the entire process"

We are always looking for new members to join and have a variety of positions available. So if you are interested please feel free to stop in on a Wednesday night after 7pm when we have training or you can come by anytime and we would be happy to speak to you about helping out your community.