Students riding the Fox Valley shuttle bus may notice something off Route 59 that the DeKalb Fire Department only can envy: a five-story tower the Naperville Fire Department uses to simulate firefighting in high-rise buildings.

Naperville Assistant Fire Chief Mike Connors explained the tower at Fire Station No. 4, 1971 Brookdale Road in Naperville, has two parts: a two-story section where fires can be set and extinguished and a five-story section into which smoke can be pumped.

“We can set fires in the two-story structure at the base of the tower and practice looking for people in the smoke,” Connors said. “All the stuff in there gets burned up. Even the interior cinder block walls are replaceable. They’re designed to be replaced once every few years.”

The first floor of the tower base can be converted into a mock-up of an underground vault using a manhole in the ceiling to simulate a ground-level entrance.

Connors said the fire company doesn’t set fires in the five-story section, but pumps both real and theatrical smoke into the building to mimic what it’s like searching for people in high rises under smoky conditions.

Connors added by the time firefighters enter the building, the tower air is so thick with smoke that not only do the firefighters require their air tanks, but they are unable to see their hands in front of their faces.

Firefighters search through smoke to find 175-pound rescue mannequins.

For some exercises, two teams of firefighters are used.

To practice extinguishing a car fire, the company will place an old car next to the training facility and set it on fire. The participants then practice putting out the fire.

The second team goes into the tower to practice putting out fires inside buildings.

In real life, two teams frequently are employed to search a building. A primary team will search in the smoke for victims, and a secondary team double checks the work of the first team to make sure no victims were missed.

“Little children are often difficult to find because they’ll hide under beds,” Connors said.

Joint exercises

“We invite firefighting companies from other towns in Illinois to participate in our exercises,” Connors said. “We’ve had several firefighters in from Aurora and that’s worked out well.”

Other towns have sent firefighters to Station No. 4 in Naperville for joint exercises, including Lisle, Warrenville, Bollingbrook, Plainfield, Wheaton, Oswego and Batavia.

DeKalb Fire Chief Pete Polarek started his career in the Naperville department, joining his older brothers Rich and Tom.

Polarek came here after a few years in Naperville and rose through the ranks.

Polarek ran two scenarios in a joint Naperville-Aurora exercise Wednesday night.

In the first scenario, the fire jumped from a burning car to the building and a second car was blocking the way to a fire hydrant, both of which were situations firefighters have encountered in past building fires.

“We want them to walk around the building and find the source of the fire,” Connors said.

Hal Carlson, an Aurora battalion chief, was the incident commanding officer for the first scenario. Fifteen men were involved in the exercise, including Polarek, the safety officer for the exercise.

“There are no rules,” Connors said before the exercise began.

“They can choose to climb the stairs to rescue the victim, or throw a ladder up against the building,” Connors said as he watched the firefighters remove a rescue mannequin from the fire. “It’s important that they be able to think on their feet.”

Firefighters do more than acquire practical skills and forge friendships at these joint exercises. They also learn the importance of close cooperation in the field.

As sparks flew off the roof from the action of firemen cutting holes in panels of the roof on the two-story house at the base of the tower, Connors explained why firefighters frequently break windows and cut holes in the roofs of burning buildings.

“Ventilation is our biggest problem,” he said.

A flashover occurs when things get so hot in a room — 1,000 to 1,500 degrees — that everything inside it spontaneously combusts.

“A back draft is a gas explosion that occurs when a fire consumes most of the oxygen in a room, and a window or door is opened,” Connors said.

Firefighters have to cool things off to keep that from happening, which is why they break windows and cut holes in rooftops.

Connors said Naperville has 199 firefighters and Aurora has more than 200, making the departments the largest outside Chicago. Of those 199 Naperville firefighters, seven are women.

Women firefighters have to be as strong as the firemen they work alongside, capable of bearing the weight of 80 to 100 pounds in protective clothing, air tanks, harnesses and tools, such as axes and saws.

They also need the stamina to climb stairs with the equipment to fight fires in tall buildings.

Each person has a mask, designed to fit the contours of an individual face, but the rest of the equipment is shared.

All firefighters in Naperville have to be paramedics before they become firefighters.

“That way, the taxpayers get more bang for their buck,” he said.

A Naperville paramedic/firefighter might be assigned to a truck one day and an ambulance the next.

A company of firefighters represents all of the members assigned to a particular fire truck.

In Chicago, there are five to six men to a truck, but in the suburbs and small towns, there are often only three men to a truck — an officer, a driver and a firefighter.

While the officer and firefighter go inside a building to check for victims, the driver will double as engineer, working to ensure water is flowing out of the truck.

Connors said the training facility is a great way to instill good practices in the firefighters, and is glad the department’s trainees have the opportunity to make their mistakes in an environment where they can be corrected without placing others in danger.