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Chester County's public safety training center to open soon

Members of the Keystone Valley Fire Department got lucky a few months ago when a Parkesburg man let them smash windows and fill with smoke the dilapidated house he was planning to demolish.

Chester County's public-safety training center in South Coatesville is expected to be ready in spring for firefighters, police, and others.
Chester County's public-safety training center in South Coatesville is expected to be ready in spring for firefighters, police, and others.Read moreRON TARVER / Staff Photographer

Members of the Keystone Valley Fire Department got lucky a few months ago when a Parkesburg man let them smash windows and fill with smoke the dilapidated house he was planning to demolish.

Opportunities like that make for great training, but they're rare.

"I'm trying to find a structure now, and I just . . . I can't," Chief Raymond Stackhouse said.

Firefighters and police officers in Chester County often have to leave the county to train or rely on props and their imaginations. But the long wait for a training place of their own is almost over.

After more than three decades of planning and gathering millions of dollars, Chester County expects to finish construction by the end of the year on the latest phase of its public-safety training campus in South Coatesville: a four-acre tactical village designed like a very unlucky little town.

The county's goal was to build a training facility that represents real life, where all first responders could train together because they often all work together during emergencies.

"It's something the county has been lacking for a long time," said Butch Dutter, president of Chester County FOP Lodge 11.

Chester County will be the first in the five-county region to have a comprehensive tactical village where all first responders can train.

More interdisciplinary training is a nationwide trend for these kinds of centers, said Joe Lang of RDG Planning & Design, an architecture firm in Nebraska that has developed more than a dozen sites like the one in Chester County.

What makes the county's outdoor training center special is a setup that encourages every first responder to use the whole four acres, said project architect Robert Manns of Manns Woodward Studios in Maryland.

To develop the newest addition, Chester County officials and first responders toured dozens of training sites in several states.

When Chester County's tactical village is finished, it will look like any quiet downtown Main Street, complete with crosswalks, telephone poles, and buildings. But it will be a place of mayhem.

Fires will burn in the houses and offices. The same bank will get held up over and over again. Cars will flip in the same ditch. Hazardous materials routinely will spill.

First responders increasingly have to be ready for emergencies of larger scale and technological complexity, groups that represent them said. That often means providing state-of-the-art training facilities for lessons instructors can't teach in a classroom.

"In the long term, it will make a difference in saving people's lives," said Mark Light, executive director of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

After decades of talk, Chester County officials pushed the training center plans forward after 9/11. The terrorist attacks emphasized the need nationwide for coordinated efforts among first responders and preparation for worst-case scenarios. The federal government also gave states more money for training.

At Chester County's tactical village, sensors inside and outside the buildings allow police officers to use a simulated weapons system to respond to fabricated threats in a real way.

Instructors will be able to move wall panels within the buildings, specially designed to take abuse, to change their layout.

By spring, members of Chester County's 43 police departments, 55 fire departments, and 27 emergency medical services departments will start training at the site.

The county is paying for the center, estimated to cost $10 million, using money from federal, state, and county government and the private sector. The county also plans to generate revenue by renting the buildings to departments outside Chester County.

The county bought the site, which is centrally located, in December 2010. It opened the first phase in September 2012. The $3.9 million academic building has a training bay and classrooms.

The county also expects to build an indoor firing range that will open in 2016.

In less than three months, paved roads will connect about 15 training areas and buildings that make up the tactical village.

"It gives us a place to actually practice scenarios where we can close streets, use sirens, use barricades," said Ron Miller, president of the county Fire Police Association. "Without practicing on some back road and scaring the motoring public."

610-313-8207 @MichaelleBond