IOWA CITY — The Iowa City Fire Department has to get creative after being forced to vacate the training facility it has used for the last 13 years.
The department was forced to leave its three-story facility in December due to plans for a new Riverfront Crossings Park.
Since 2002, the facility has been used as a space for centralized classrooms, storage for training props and outdoor live fire training exercises.
According to Fire Chief John Grier, the department has distributed training materials among the four stations around the city.
“There are some new and innovative ways to find a way to continue what we were doing at the old facility,” Grier said. “We have a video conference system so we can hold classes across all four stations at once, and we’ve been working with the city to practice some live burns in vacated buildings.”