Farm fire practice for Craven Arms firefighters

A South Shropshire farmhouse has been “donated” for a day to firefighters so they can practice their firefighting skills.

The empty cottage under renovation at Corfton Farm in Corvedale Road will be pumped full of white cosmetic smoke today ready for firefighters from Craven Arms fire station to recreate as near as possible the conditions of a house fire.

Farmer Stephen Povall, a South Shropshire parish councillor who owns the cottage, has helped previously by offering an empty silo for firefighters to train in.

“We used lines to slowly lower and raise firefighters into the empty silo in a training session,” said Jason Norgrove, Watch Manager at Craven Arms fire station.

“The empty cottage is ideal for us to recreate a scenario where a person is trapped inside the building in a fire and our crews will arrive as in a 999 operation and wear breathing apparatus.

“It is the type of property we could well be turning out to for real with steep stairs and a curved staircase to the two upstairs bedrooms. This training is vital as it gives firefighters experience of what they will face in a live incident. We are very grateful to the cottage owners for helping us out.”

More than ten firefighters will take part in the training session at 6.45pm this evening. Fire officers will observe the training using thermal image cameras and carry out a full debrief afterwards.

Craven Arms firefighters attend up to 150 incidents each year including house fires, road crashes on the busy A49 route, and water rescues. The county’s High Volume Pumping Unit is stationed in Craven Arms and used across Shropshire and out of the county. It was used to deal with flooding in Surrey recently.