Chattanooga will receive $1.5 million from Hamilton County to replace an almost 50-year-old fire training tower at the Chattanooga Fire and Police Training Center at 3200 Amnicola Highway.
"This has been a long-standing need," Chattanooga Fire Chief Phil Hyman told the Chattanooga Times Free Press by phone on Monday. "The drill tower that's currently there was built in 1976 and has certainly far passed its length of service to not only the city of Chattanooga but the surrounding fire departments in this region that use it as well."
The cost of replacing the tower will be about $3 million, Hyman said, and he hopes to receive matching funds from the city in the next budget cycle. He doesn't yet have a timeline for construction.
Firefighters use the existing six-story structure to train in practical scenarios, such as blazes in high-rise buildings. Urban search and rescue personnel use the tower to practice rope work, Hyman said, and scaling it also acts as a physical fitness exercise for new recruits.
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"There's a ton of firefighter skills that can be done in a lot of different disciplines," Hyman said.
It's also a resource for regional agencies, he said. Municipal and volunteer fire departments throughout the county use the drill tower on a regular basis.
"We try to be a good partner with all of our neighboring fire departments because they get the best benefit out of it as well," Hyman said. "Just the amount of use that that building gets, no wonder it's reached its service life and needs replacement."
The Chattanooga City Council formally accepted the $1.5 million allocation from the county during its meeting Tuesday.
That allotment is a small piece of the $71.4 million worth of federal funding Hamilton County received through the American Rescue Plan Act, a stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress in 2021 to help the economy through the pandemic. Commissioners distributed the last of Hamilton County's money Wednesday.
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Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger told the Times Free Press by phone Thursday that the county was evaluating setting up its own fire training center but that it made more sense for the city and county to work together. This will ensure the county's volunteer fire departments can continue to use the facility on Amnicola Highway.
A former firefighter and chief for the Chattanooga Fire Department, Coppinger said regular training plays a key role in ensuring first responders can make split-second decisions during unexpected situations.
"It's kind of like our military," he said. "You train all the time for the most unusual scenarios in the hope that you never have to utilize any of that training, but as we've learned throughout the history of the fire departments and our military, there are unusual situations that come up."
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Over the long-term, Hyman said, officials also plan to replace the training center's main building to ensure the city's Police and Fire departments have access to state-of-art classrooms and office space.
The building was constructed at the same time as the fire tower and has been renovated a number of times over the years, Hyman said, but the city has outgrown the space. There are only four classrooms available for the estimated 560 personnel in the Chattanooga Police Department and the roughly 430 employees in the Fire Department, he said.
"The space is extremely compressed, and we've got to expand at some point," he said.
Contact David Floyd at dfloyd@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6249. Follow him on Twitter @flavid_doyd.