TOPSHAM

Black smoke could be seen in the sky for miles Sunday but the flames that tore through the former nursing home at 29 Elm St., were intentionally set.

The blaze concluded a controlled training burn that involved a multi-agency training all day Saturday before crews returned early Sunday morning to burn the building down as excavators from Harry C. Crooker and Sons stood by waiting to begin moving debris into sorted piles. The former Amenity Manor facility was slated for demolition to make way for an affordable senior housing project on the site, and provided an opportunity for region-wide training in the building.

Elm Street was blocked off Saturday and Sunday during the event. Topsham Fire Chief Brian Stockdale said town officials and the community have been “phenomenally” supportive of the training. The fire department used National Fire Protection Association standards and Department of Environmental Protection regulations to assess and ensure the building was appropriate for a controlled burn.

The department has used this building for about a month-and-a-half for largearea search, search and rescue, air management drills, ladder training, wall breaching, forcible entry and many other scenarios, Stockdale said. They also did a fire prevention television segment on kitchen fires. The sheer size of this building allowed crews to practice long hosedrags and provided an opportunity they rarely get.

While in this kind of fire they won’t get the same kind of flame as in a real-case structure fire, full of synthetics like couches and mattresses, “We can show them fire behavior,” Stockdale said. “We can show them how fire travels, the smoke, what the heat feels like in the building, what it’s like to operate in no visibility, so we try to make it as best as possible. It’s not perfect but it’s safe and they can see other things that they may not get a chance to, especially today when the amount of fires certainly has gone down and the focus has shifted to medical,” and other pieces of public safety firefighters are responsible for.

“We’ve had numerous departments come in and train with us and it’s a fantastic regional training opportunity, as well as an academy we have running as well,” Stockdale said. Saturday after several hours of training he said firefighters came from Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Brunswick, Monmouth, Lisbon, West Bath and the Tri-County Fire Academy.

Training allowed firefighters to complete several evolutions Saturday, and “In an evolution what we do is, we have numerous positions and each team has a specific position,” Stockdale said. “For example, one is a ventilation team, we have an interior attack team, we have a team for a backup line and overhaul,” and an evolution allows a team to fill each of the jobs from when the fire is set to when it’s out. Then crews regrouped and rotated positions. They used only hay and wood pallets, Class A material, because firefighters know the burning properties and know how it will burn and how fast. The rooms were stripped of any synthetics such as carpets and set up the pallets differently depending on the size of the room.

The regional training opportunity allowed departments to get together and work on its communication and practices and to have teams from different departments meet each other, work together and build camaraderie which “really enhances the cooperation between everybody, and that was really the goal in this whole process,” Stockdale said.