A two-story house on the northern end of North 13th Street in Philomath went up in flames Sunday but this was not any sort of tragedy that cut short human life or displaced a family. The fire was planned — and firefighters of all skill levels were able to sharpen their skills through a carefully coordinated “burn to learn” opportunity.
Philomath Fire and Rescue had 26 crew members participate — 21 firefighters and five emergency medical services and support personnel. Adair Rural Fire and Rescue sent an engine crew with six firefighters. The fire chiefs from both Philomath and Adair participated. Philomath’s Rich Saalsaa, deputy fire chief, served in the role of incident commander.
Gallery: Philomath Fire and Rescue Live Burn (March 3, 2024)
A collection of photos of a live burn training exercise hosted by Philomath Fire and Rescue on Sunday.
“The exercise went very well and we accomplished everything that we set out to do,” Saalsaa said. “We were operating in basically almost-freezing conditions but on the other hand, fire doesn’t wait for a nice day.”
A box that the fire district could check was getting some firefighters their first experience fighting a blaze in an actual building. Those individuals completed their live fire training in what are referred to as “burn boxes.”
“That always gives it a completely different perspective when you’re actually seeing the fire generated by the house itself as opposed to a more simulated kind of thing,” Saalsaa said.
The house, built in 1906, had nine rooms on two floors that covered 2,340 square feet, Saalsaa said. A 644-foot detached garage was built in 1930.
“Houses of that age are very well constructed to last obviously a very long time,” Saalsaa said. “I think it just got to the point with lack of insulation and just its age that it would cost more to try to pay to refurbish than it is to just have a do-over. So that’s what the property owners chose to do.”
Property tax records show the owner as TSY Peak LLC — “basically, Thompson Timber,” as Saalsaa noted.
“They called us to see if we would be interested in using the house as a training burn,” Saalsaa said. “We absolutely jumped on that one just because it’s in the city, easy to get to.”
The house went through various stages of preparation before the live burn could occur.
“It had to be abated for asbestos and lead-based paint, and the carpeting was taken out,” Saalsaa said. “We basically removed pretty much all fixtures except the porcelain ones like the sinks and toilets and things like that — they were kind of left in place but essentially it was pretty-well stripped.”
Windows were also boarded to contain the heat of the fire.
The fire department got a lot of training time out of the house long before Sunday’s ignition.
“We’ve been able to drill inside of that house for the entire months of January and February so that we could basically practice pulling in hose — we weren’t using any water — but we could do forcible entry, we could do wall breeches, all sorts of training opportunities at the house,” Saalsaa said.
When the day of live fire arrived, participants could advance their skills through various types of scenarios.
“We can practice different kinds of combinations of attack — attack from the outside going in, attack directly from the inside, attack from the outside only and that kind of thing,” Saalsaa said.
The training exercise got off a little later than anticipated at around 10:40 a.m. and wrapped up close to 4 p.m.
“We didn’t do any burning where we had people in the building on the second floor,” Saalsaa said. “There’s just too many safety concerns in terms of egress and things of that nature. We just chose not to do that. At the end, we set fires up on the top so it basically burned from the top down. That allows the house to collapse in on itself.”
Saalsaa said the district usually has the opportunity to do a live burn exercise about every 12 to 18 months. Prior to Sunday, the last one for Philomath Fire and Rescue had been in April 2022 when a house was burned down near Kings Valley Charter School. The last live burn inside the Philomath city limits occurred in 2020 to take down a house on Applegate just west of South 19th.
