BRYAN, Texas — Bryan/College Station Habitat for Humanity staged a fire at a single-family home by putting furniture inside while the Bryan Fire Department pushed smoke inside it, to simulate a structure fire.
"Whenever we got the structure, it was in really bad shape, completely unusable for us. So, we were going to have to demolish the structure," Director of Property Acquisition at B/CS Habitat for Humanity, NathanTouchette said. "Before doing that, I thought it'd be a great idea to see how we can get the community involved and who we can help with the use of the structure before it was demolished."
Touchette has been working for habitat for humanity for the past 10 years. Normally they help build affordable homes for low-income individuals but today they helped the community differently, by letting the local fire department do live training on the home.
"Just seeing how well they communicate between the supervisors, the guys breaking in the doors, and then the guys helping the victims," Touchette said. "It was astonishing to watch how well they communicate and how efficiently they get everybody out. That was really awesome."
Assistant chief of operations Jason Nored says these types of training are rare. Being able to practice these procedures in an actual home, with actually, obstacles makes the difference when life or lives are on the line.
"It boils down to muscle memory a lot of times whenever you're stressed out, you just rely on the muscle memory to take over,' Nored said. Obviously, the adrenaline's not here, but this prepares us to remain calm during a real fire scenario."
According to Touchette, this is the first time habitat for humanity has done something like this before, and they look forward to doing this more in the future.