BURBANK TO BUILD FIRE SIMULATOR AS REGIONAL TRAINER FLASHOVER BOX AN `INFERNO'.

Byline: JASON KANDEL Staff Writer

For 30 minutes inside a converted shipping container, 20 Burbank firefighters battled the flames, 1,400 degrees of intense heat.

When they emerged, they knew what it would be like to encounter such conditions in the field, and had survived their flashover-fire survival training.

That was last year at the Los Angeles Fire Department's version of the program, called the Live-Fire Training Facility, at the Van Norman Dam in Mission Hills.

Now, Burbank is getting its own flashover facility, possibly as early as November. The facility will give firefighters a close-up look at a fire phenomenon -- known as rapid fire progress -- that kills on average about five firefighters a year in the United States, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

``It becomes a living inferno in there,'' Burbank Fire Battalion Chief Bill Sanders said. ``It feels extremely hot. It's untenable. That's what we're trying to prevent, to prevent those conditions from building up.''

Sanders' department this past week received a $157,000 grant from the Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. to build its facility, likely near Brand Park in Glendale at the base of the Verdugo Mountains. Details are being finalized between fire agencies and the city.

Construction is expected to begin in the next three months. Once it's done, Burbank will share the facility as a regional training center with Glendale and nine other San Gabriel Valley area fire agencies.

In a letter requesting the grant, Burbank Fire Chief Tracy Pansini wrote that the new facility goes to ``the heart of firefighter safety and training in the most dangerous activity we face -- interior structural firefighting.''

``The only experience you got as a firefighter was by going to an actual emergency in the past,'' said LAFD Capt. Craig Nielsen, who helped start the department's live-fire training program four years ago, a program that trains the department's 3,561 firefighters throughout the year.

``Here, you're able to do it in a nice, controlled environment. It allows the firefighters to witness all stages of fire development, from ignition to fully involved -- or flashover.''

The training facilities, made from steel shipping containers, are designed by Draeger Safety Systems Inc. and were based on a concept developed in Sweden in 1987 by the Swedish Rescue Services Agency, an arm of the government. The idea was brought to the United States in 1991 by Swede Survival Systems. There are 180 such facilities across the country, with more than a dozen in Southern California.

``The whole idea behind these systems is to show firefighters the kinds of conditions that they may encounter in structure fires,'' said John Hunter, product manager for Draeger Safety Systems Inc., based in Encinitas. ``It's really their laboratory in fire behavior.''

Firefighters undergo a realistic simulation inside what is known as the burn room. The walls and ceiling are lined with sheets of particle board. An instructor lights a 55-gallon drum filled with wood, and firefighters -- in turnout coats, protective gear and masks -- watch as the fire spreads and smoke banks down. Once the room's fully heated, gases and smoke accumulate until the room is completely dark. Then flames shoot through the smoke -- or flashover.

``It's bright. It's hot. You can feel the pressure once it lights up,'' Nielsen said. ``You can hear the rush of flames, almost like a freight train sometimes. You're going from complete darkness to instant flames completely over your head.''

jason.kandel(at)dailynews.com

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