By Dave Scutt, Fire Chief

The house at 502 Park Street is now history. The city owned building underwent demolition in early December of 2005.

Over the past few years this structure was used extensively for fire department training. Most nobility was the intense training held in May of 2003. This Firefighter Survival weekend class, the first in the area, taught firefighters from around the area, four from Miami Dade, Florida and one from Detroit on how to save themselves if things go wrong.

All firefighters went through four modules.

Module one was SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus) emergencies. Firefighters were taught how to survive a breathing apparatus failure, air conservation, out of air emergencies, removal from entanglement, and being lost or disoriented in a structure.

Module two was a collapse situation. The second floor of the structure was actually dropped to the first floor causing void spaces the firefighters had to crawl through. Instruction was given on surviving a floor collapsing on them, communications, void space maneuvers, low profile maneuvers, and improvised shoring.

Module three was fire floor operations. This included first and second window escape, hose slide escape, second floor ladder escape, and upper window rope escape.

Module four was working above the fire. Firefighters were taught how to arrest their slide on a rooftop utilizing tools at hand, arresting their fall through a floor, ascending hose lines, bridging an open space, repelling from a roof, and wall climbing.

This house gave us a unique opportunity to train in a structure in which we operate most of the time. Even though this house was a great training ground not only for Mason Fire Department but the surrounding departments it was time to go.