Fisher Hall was reduced to rubble, while a new building is to be built in its place. The dorm, which existed from 1952 to the present, had one final function besides housing students: it served as a perfect fire training ground for the Notre Dame and Clay fire departments, as well as the Notre Dame Police Department.
“When we learned that these two buildings (Fisher Hall and Pangborn Hall) were going to be demolished, we had the opportunity to train in a real building,” said the deputy fire chief. Tim Hoeppner he said. He has been at Notre Dame for 35 years and has served a total of 41 years with the fire department. The Notre Dame Fire Department was founded in 1879 and is the oldest campus fire department in the United States.
Hoeppner coordinated with the building design team to gain access to the now-defunct building. He worked with the Clay Fire Territory’s training department to organize a training day for both departments and the NDPD. The training took place in May and included “breaking” or opening doors with tools. They also conducted “evolutions” – scenarios in which firefighters carry the fire hose up stairwells.
The training, which takes place in different locations every year, lasted a full day and involved 15 participants. This type of training is usually conducted off campus. While no live ammunition was fired, the authorities had the opportunity to simulate a high-rise exercise in the four-story building (anything over four stories is considered a high-rise).
“We simulated a room fire by running a hose from a standpipe in the stairwell of the building,” said Hoeppner. The standpipes – water pipes in stairwells, for example – allow firefighters to use a water system inside the building instead of filling it from the fire truck.
Hoeppner explained the additional benefits of using a standpipe in the stairwell of a building. In a house fire, the hose line would be filled with water, or “charged,” in the front yard and then brought into the house. If the fire starts in a taller building, that task becomes more difficult. “You have to charge the line in the building, up the stairs and up the stairs and get that done. It’s a lot harder when it’s full of water and has 150 pounds of pressure than when there’s no water in it. Then you can just pull it around stuff.”
Firefighters in full gear and equipment carry 90 to 100 pounds on their bodies in addition to the weight of the filled fire hose. Each hose package consists of 200 feet of hose, with each section 100 feet long. Crews must “guess” or estimate the length of hose needed to reach the fire. Hoeppner asks, “Can we do it with 100 feet? Or do we know we need to expand to 200 feet?”
The 200-foot section of hose also serves as a precautionary measure.
“If something goes wrong, you have to be able to get out. And you don’t want to go deeper than 200 feet into a building,” Hoeppner said. “You may have to approach it from a different angle. The fire may be so big that you have to be defensive rather than offensive.”
Clay Fire Territory’s participation gave both agencies, which often assist each other but use different tools, the opportunity to try out those tools as well as different techniques. In the event of a real emergency, NDPD would provide perimeter security, assist with evacuation, and provide access or entry to a space, depending on the situation.
Nearly 100 percent of the campus is equipped with sprinklers and detectors, which have a state-of-the-art fire alarm system that provides early notification to firefighters. But a major advantage of having Notre Dame’s own fire department is the campus’s familiarity.
“We know our buildings and our systems very well,” said Hoeppner. “We can trust that the standpipes will work for us. We can trust our system.”
