Normally, large billows of smoke and 30 foot flames don’t describe your normal school. But if you were a student enrolled with Fire Service last week, you wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Fire Service Extension, part of the Industry and Business Extensions Program, held its annual three day Liquid Natural Gas school on April 23 to 25. Employees of Liquid Natural Gas and other gas companies were sent to Ames from around the United States to learn how to deal with various types of fires.

The school is taught by sixteen instructors, half from the gas industry and the other from from fire departments. Thirty-one students from as far as New Jersey and Washington attended the school which provides on-the-job training every spring.

Mike Cherry, Field Program Coordinator for the Fire Service Institute, says the school gives its students the ability to make the right decisions.

“… (The school) gives these people enough experience to know what to do in a situation such as the ones we show them here,” Cherry said. “Sometimes it’s just the decision on whether to put the fire out or just turn off a valve.”

The school consists of about thirty percent class work, including training on how to use the Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (S.C.B.A.), and seventy percent hands-on experience. The school presents its students with 8 different live fire evolutions involving Liquid Natural Gas, propane and other flammable liquids and gases in various combinations under differing circumstances. Some of these have gained nicknames over the years such as the “sprinkler”, the “jungle gym” and the “flaming hot tub”. The students practice “attacking” different fires using extinguishers, hoses and foam.

For students like Chip Hecimovich, the class is just part of his job. Hecimovich, an employee of the Minnegasco company in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has taken the class 4 times now. “We’re required to take the class every other year,” Hecimovich said. “It’s one of those skills you hope you’ll never have to use.”

Hecimovich said the continuous training he and his fellow employees have to go through becomes rather monotonous, but that it’s nice to have the knowledge to know what to do.

“You never know when you will have to use it. I did have to handle a small fire a while ago, but the experience I gained at schools like this one allowed me to handle the situation quickly without really even thinking,” he said.

One of the most exciting and intense experiences at the school is the Liquid Natural Gas “pool” evolution. Asmall round pit is filled about three feet deep with L.N.G, festering at a cool -240 degrees. As soon as it hits open air, the vapor rises into the sky.

The vapor itself is quite dangerous, consisting of ninety-nine percent methane. The pool is then lit as flames leap fifty feet into the air. A small team, armed with only Class B.C. extinguishers, moves in and snuffs the blaze in a matter of seconds.

“That’s the one that everyone really gets pumped for,” Cindy Friend, also from Minnegasco, said about the “pool”. “The fire is so large and so hot, it’s kinda scary. I guess the whole point is to show us that such a large situation can be dealt with, if you know how to do it.”

The next time you think you’ve had a rough day at school, be glad you were just fighting with teachers, and not fires.