Photos by Savannah Schmidt.
Sam Springfield of the Vestavia Hills Fire Department waits his turn to practice a crawl space exercise during his firefighter training at the Over the Mountain Regional Training Center in Mountain Brook on Oct. 1.
The Vestavia Hills City Council took another step Monday night towards building a new tactical burn building to train firefighters on the site of the Mountain Brook Fire Department training facility.
The move requires an agreement between the two municipalities.
A first reading in the Vestavia Hills City Council of the proposed agreement went into the record Monday, paving way for an approval later by the city council. Mountain Brooks passed a similar agreement at their meeting on Monday night.
The move would strengthen a collaboration between the two fire departments which have an “automatic aid agreement” between the municipalities for each other’s fire department to answer fire emergencies in city limits of the other.
In the agreement, Vestavia Hills would be responsible for the financing of the new building, but it would remain on the site of the Mountain Brook facility, which Vestavia already uses to train its fire fighters.
The move also saves Vestavia Hills a substantial amount of money. Instead of building a new stand-alone training facility, they can make the improvements at the Mountain Brook facility.
Mountain Brook Fire Chief Chris Mullins called the partnership a “win-win” that has grown out of years of cooperative training between the two departments. “We’ve been trying to do some things to train together for quite a while,” Mullins said. “It’s just kind of drawn our communities closer.”
The new burn building, to be installed by Vestavia, will enhance the facility’s capabilities. Unlike the current masonry structure, the upgraded unit will support live fire training with insulated burn rooms.
“It’s just next-level… bigger and better, brand new, and it’ll be the only one like it in the state of Alabama,” Mullins said.
Both cities’ firefighters will benefit from the proximity of the site, enabling on-duty training without the need for overtime. “It’s just worked out really good for both cities,” Mullins said. “It’s good for both cities economically… but it’s also good for the fire departments because it keeps us training together on the same training field.”
The collaboration reflects a broader strategy of regional cooperation among Vestavia Hills, Mountain Brook, and Homewood. The three cities are part of an automatic aid agreement in which departments are immediately dispatched to support one another during house fires. “It just gives us more people on the scene, more resources,” Mullins said. “If we’re out, they’ve got our backs.”
