Anyone who notices a house burning on East Poplar Street in Mount Airy Monday night need not be alarmed — it will only be a controlled burn for fire-training purposes.
The Mount Airy Fire Department conducts such exercises periodically, which serves a dual purpose of providing an opportunity to practice for the real thing while removing dilapidated, unwanted structures from the community.
“It’s cheaper to get rid of them this way,” Fire Chief Zane Poindexter said Friday.
In this case, an old house at 220 E. Poplar St. is involved, which is scheduled to be torched Monday at 5 p.m. The last such controlled burn occurred last November at a house beside the fire station on Rockford Street.
Monday’s training exercise will be different from others, including not only Mount Airy personnel but members of four local volunteer fire departments that are part of an automatic aid pact with the city who’ve been invited.
Those include the Franklin, Four-Way, Bannertown and White Plains units that dispatch personnel to battle blazes in Mount Airy, which reciprocates by routinely supplying manpower to fires in their respective coverage areas. The agreement ensures adequate numbers in every instance.
Poindexter expects up to 30 firefighters to be involved Monday altogether.
A key difference surrounding the controlled burn then will involve the fact that water used to suppress the fire will not come from municipal hydrants but through the tanker truck method.
The reason for this is two-fold, Poindexter explained.
“In that area, the (city) water system has older lines,” he said of the East Poplar Street vicinity, and fire personnel want to avoid stressing those pipes and hydrants with the supply needed to attack the blaze at the house targeted.
“And we want to train with our automatic aid departments on how we would operate with them in their non-hydrant areas,” Poindexter said regarding outlying communities where Mount Airy firefighters might assist.
Personnel are expected to be on the scene for much of Monday night. Once the house is razed, the site will be monitored during the evening for flare-ups.
“By midnight everybody should be back at the station,” Poindexter said.
The fire chief mentioned that he is contacted from time to time by property owners wanting to dispose of rundown houses through the controlled-burn method.
However, Poindexter says this is not as easy as going out and striking a match but requires governmental approval, which takes much time and “a lot of paperwork.”
Scheduling also can be an issue. “Sometimes we can’t use them then — we have other things going on,” he said of occasions when such structures are offered.
That wasn’t the case with the old house on East Poplar Street. “This one worked out,” the chief said.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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