Photos
The site, which sits behind the Georgia-Pacific box plant on Fones Road and is accessed via The Home Depot’s parking lot, is called the City of Olympia Fire Department Mark Noble Regional Fire Training Center.
About 100 people attended the event, which began with the unveiling of the training center sign, followed by a ribbon-cutting ceremony in the form of turning on a fire hydrant. A fire-training demonstration followed, and the event ended with a shovel-in-the dirt ground-breaking ceremony for the second phase of construction.
A number of firefighters and Mark Noble’s family attended. His wife, Rebecca, spoke during the ceremony, as did his sister, Lisa Noble-Smith. His two sons and mother also took part. On display was a picture of Mark and a framed picture of a firefighter shirt he used to wear.
Noble was with the Olympia Fire Department since June 1997 until he died at 48 in 2005 from brain cancer, a disease common among firefighters because of smoke and other things they are exposed to when fighting fires, Rebecca Noble said. Noble said Mark would’ve been thrilled with the center.
“A training facility that can keep people safe is huge,” she said. “He loved his job.”
Funding for the training center was raised as part of a $16.5 million, voter-approved bond in 2008, deputy Olympia fire chief Greg Wright said. About $7 million paid for the six-story structure as well as a fourth fire station in Olympia at Lilly and Stoll roads. An additional $1.5 million will be spent to add two more fire-related training buildings at the center, and the entire center is expected to be complete in 2013, Wright said.
Olympia Mayor Doug Mah, along with City Council members Rhenda Strub and Steve Langer, helped christen the center by turning on a fire hydrant, sending a water blast through a connected fire hose.
Mah called the center a “fabulous regional asset.”
That’s part of the plan. Not only will Olympia firefighters get to train at the center, but other regional fire districts as well. Olympia firefighters previously were confined to a half-block-long space for their training behind the old City Hall on Plum Street, or they had to travel to near North Bend, the site of a state-operated training facility, Wright said.
The six-story structure – five stories and a basement – has been designed to reflect a different setting on each floor. It has a retail, residential, apartment and an office/cubicle environment inside, as well as a search maze on the top floor. Simulated smoke is environmentally friendly, produced with a peanut oil and nitrogen gas. Tumwater Mayor Pete Kmet, who also works for the state Department of Ecology, said that’s an improvement over the days when gasoline and diesel were used to ignite training fires.
Rolf Boone: 360-754-5403
rboone@theolympian.com
Copyright 2012 The Olympian. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
