Tyco Williams Fire & Hazard Control’s annual Xtreme Industrial Fire & Hazard Training will celebrate its 24th anniversary in 2017 by returning to the fire school where it originated at – Brayton Field in College Station, TX.
Robert Moore, director of the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service’s Emergency Services Training Institute, said discussions to conduct the Xtreme school at Brayton have been ongoing for years.
“It just makes sense to have one of the best fire schools operating today located at Brayton,” Moore said.
Drawing emergency responders specializing in industrial fire from around the world, the Xtreme school at Brayton is scheduled for June 5 through 8, 2017. Registration for the school through the WF&HC website begins in June 2016.
Chauncey Naylor, director of emergency response training and education for WF&HC, said the first Xtreme schools, then known as the Les Williams Flammable Liquid Firefighting Foam Workshop, were conducted at Brayton in 1993 and 1994.
That the school was soon transferred to the Beaumont Emergency Services Training Complex in Beaumont, TX, was largely a matter of convenience for Williams F&HC, then based in nearby Mauriceville, Naylor said.
“Now that we are part of Tyco International, we have the resources that make the move back to TEEX possible,” he said.
To facilitate the move, TEEX plans to construct a 45- foot diameter storage tank to be used in livefire exercises. Construction will begin before the end of the year, Naylor said.
“It will be eight-foot-tall with a wind girder complete with railing all the way around,” Naylor said. “It will have a platform on both sides in case the wind changes during an exercise. It will be a great training instrument.”
The storage tank prop can be used with a variety of foam delivery equipment mounted on the rim to an over-the-top foam application using a large-volume monitor.
Moore said that plans also call for the addition of a tank mixer to the existing storage tank project at Brayton to simulate specific emergencies such as packing gland fires.
“Other than that, we have everything that WF&HC needs,” he said.
In particular, Brayton has a WF&HC large capacity pump that will be used to draft water from a large pond to support demonstrations of monitors and large-diameter hose.
“That’s always been the challenge, the logistics needed to support something like the Xtreme school,” Moore said.
Last year, TEEX announced a training partnership that permits WF&HC to conduct certified industrial emergency curriculum such as the Pro Board Fire Service Professional Qualifications System, an international accreditation.
“We’re a certified learning center,” Naylor said. “We’re making sure that even our sales people are trained to a level that meets or exceeds that of the responders we sell to.”
As for the Xtreme schools, versions are being cloned for overseas audiences, he said.
“Last September we conducted an Xtreme school just outside Paris,” Naylor said. “We have another one in France scheduled for this September and one in Thailand in January. We are also looking at adding another school for South America, probably Brazil.”
Plans are also being made to conduct an Xtreme school at facilities operated by TEEX in Abu Dhabi, UAE, he said.
“It’s actually hard to gear up to do these schools offshore,” Naylor said. “Still, there is a growing demand for it.”
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