Fire & Smoke: Reality Training

County Fire Rescue Training at San Rafael & Anacapa Residence Halls

Residential Operations partnered with the Santa Barbara County Fire Department this past April to provide access to unoccupied San Rafael Tower and Anacapa for multiple trainings.

HDAE and County Fire saw this as a win-win opportunity. County Fire was provided access to perform drills and gain insight into best practices for responding to residence hall type facilities. Captain Olmstead of Station 17 shared, “training like this provides us the opportunity to learn about where and how best to hook up and pull hoses for incidents. The quickest path to a fire is typically not through the front door.” In addition to becoming familiar with the physical layout of these facilities, County Fire was able to receive a review of recent upgrades to our various fire alarm control and alert systems.

“The training in Anacapa provided a first hand experience of what it is like to respond to a fire in a campus residence hall or apartment complex,” stated Captain Olmstead. “The ability to utilize our smoke machine in the unoccupied building added a unique opportunity to make this training more realistic. Visibility is significantly impacted during fires and this truly helped with the success of our event.”

Whereas Anacapa was used for realistic training involving smoke, San Rafael served a different focus and allowed rescue staff to practice scenarios involving elevators.

County Fire was very appreciative of this partnership. They expressed their sincere gratitude to us for welcoming them into our buildings for hands-on training that will keep their skills sharp.