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| By G. Michael Dobbs Managing Editor CHICOPEE What has been a detriment to the neighborhood has turned into a positive. Chicopee firefighters were starting their training use for a three-story house at 9-11 Blanche St. on Friday. Acting Deputy Chief William Lemay explained the current cadet class would be using the building for a number of training exercises. The firefighters would be learning how to take down ceilings and create vents as well as participate in various search and recover exercises. No live fire will be used at the house, Lemay added. The cadets are in their eighth week of a 12-week training program and Lemay said the house was perfect as a training area as it has a layout that can be found in many other houses in the city. Over the next several weeks, veteran firefighters will also be rotated into the building for training as well, he said. Lemay said that while the class structures used in fire training are good, "there's nothing like a real building." The ability to have such a facility is pretty rare, Lemay said. In his 20 years in the Chicopee Fire Department he knows of only four times the firefighters have had such an opportunity. The first thing the student firefighters did was to clear out the rooms in the house so they could get down to crawl on the floor and not get hurt. Alderman George Moreau said the house has been abandoned for over a year and the tenants literally walked out of the building leaving possessions from televisions to personal items such as family photos and checkbooks. Moreau said the building has been "black eye on the neighborhood." Once the firefighters are done with the building, it will be razed and the Chicopee Neighborhood Development Corporation will build a single family home on the site, which will be then sold to a first-time home buyers under the federal HOME program. |