Lamar County officials are moving forward with the upcoming fire training facility behind the Lamar County Emergency Operations Center on Center Industrial Row in Purvis, with dirt work expected to begin by the beginning of next week, weather permitting.
Currently, as required by the Mississippi State Rating Bureau, all fire departments in the county are trained in-house at existing stations, completing exercises like climbing through windows, simulating breaching doors and other activities. The upcoming facility, however, will give fire officials the ability to do a lot of non-fire training, such as emergency medical training, search and rescue training and HAZMAT training.
“We’ve been working on this for over a year, and the funds were approved by the (Mississippi) Legislature in 2020,” Lamar County Fire Coordinator Kyle Hill said. “So it’s been (a while) getting to this point, and it’s going to be a game-changer for training in the county, as far as what our firefighters can train and do.”
In addition, the facility would offer a Class A fire rating, meaning officials would be able to burn items like natural wood products inside to give firefighters even more training. It also could offer a driving course, where emergency and law enforcement officials could learn how to drive those vehicles in a controlled environment.
“It will offer the opportunity to work search and rescue inside the structure; without live fire training, we can still do all of that stuff,” Hill said. “We can smoke it out so they can do some controlled search and rescue that’s in safe situations, and it does have the ability to do some live fire training in two portions of the building.
“It’s got two live fire burn rooms, so they can actually experience heat and fire in those situations.”
The matter was originally discussed at a June 2020 meeting of the Lamar County Board of Supervisors, where Hill said all 13 fire chiefs in the county were in agreement to commence with the beginning stages of constructing the facility. At that time, the price tag on the project was approximately $600,000, but that figure is now $850,000 with the addition of some site improvement, a retention pond for tanker training and a dry storage building.
“We have our fire classes that we actually have through certified instructors in the county, through Pearl River and sanctioned by the Mississippi State Fire Academy,” Hill said in an earlier story. “And then, obviously our classes that we can take through the fire academy and at the fire academy.
“But a training facility in Lamar County will give us the opportunity to get the kind of training that we’re getting at the fire academy. Right now, if we train a new firefighter that’s a rookie who comes in and has never had any experience, probably the first time they really feel heat and smoke is going to be at their first house fire, the way it stands right now.”
The main portion of the facility is currently being constructed, and officials expect that building to be delivered and installed by January or February. Once that process is complete, the contractor will have until the end of May to finish any improvements to the site.
“It would be a great tool for all our departments, for a lot of outside agencies,” Hill said. “We could host other agencies coming in, and other counties could use this.”
