Reno Fire Department and the airport fire station send their crew members into crash trucks to take turns putting out a plane fire.
Training started Tuesday and will last for four days. The first two days are dedicated to putting out fires and rescuing civilians. The following two days will be learning how to drive and manage the crash trucks.
“They've been spending the first few days out here in the heat just to get the specialized training, just to make our community safer,” said Reno Fire Department Chief Cory Whitlock
He said they set the plane on fire in different situations and configurations.
“That way, it's not a standard approach all the time,” Whitlock said.
They will run this simulation dozens of times to ensure each firefighter is not only comfortable putting out a fire using the trucks but also meeting their time restriction.
“We want everyone to be comfortable. So it's up to each person individually. Some of these people are doing this for the first time, so that's why we're doing it so many times,” Whitlock said.
He said the Airport Fire Station needs to have a plane fire out within 3 minutes of receiving the call. The firefighters compare the speed of the crash truck to a Ferrari. The trucks can hold up to 1500 gallons of water.
The prop plane is designed to be set on fire multiple times for training like this. It’s owned by the Industrial Emergency Council, a non-profit that helps fire stations on the West Coast become recertified with the FFA.
Gerald Stein, known as Sarge, is an instructor and helps oversee the training.
“We teach other things besides airport stuff. We teach hazmat fire officer courses, medical, things like that. So this is the most recent addition to the company's nonprofit jobs that they provide,” he said.
RFD and the airport fire station are required to do aircraft rescue and fire training once every year and plan to standardize the training for summer as travel becomes more frequent.
“Overall, (plane crashes) are very rare, but they're really critical, because most airlines coming in here carry 180 passengers or so,” Whitlock said.
