Firefighters To Use Buildings To Train
The Santa Fe Fire Department is hoping to conduct training sessions inside vacant buildings at the Santa Fe Indian School before they are torn down.
Fire officials say an old dormitory and other decades-old structures offer a rare opportunity for crews to knock down doors, shatter windows and spray their hoses.
“It’s stuff that we actually don’t have the props to do right now,” Assistant Fire Chief Charlie Velarde said.
Before the training can begin, the 19 New Mexico pueblos, which own the school and have approved the firefighters’ training there, must certify that asbestos has been removed from the buildings, Velarde said.
Asbestos, which can cause lung cancer, has been a concern for nearby residents ever since bulldozers last month began razing dilapidated homes and other structures, some of them more than 100 years old, that have long been a part of the Cerrillos Road cityscape.
But officials have said asbestos was abated in the 15 buildings about a month before demolition work began.
Meanwhile, workers have begun removing asbestos from three more buildings — a dorm, administrative building and the cafeteria — where firefighters hope to train.
The asbestos abatement began inside the dorm last week, according to Scott Taylor, senior project manager for Flintco, the company in charge of tearing down the school’s old campus and building the nearly completed $50 million new one.
The company performing the abatement, based in Phoenix, told the Environmental Protection Agency early this month that more than 27,000 square feet of material containing asbestos would be removed from the three structures.
Much of that asbestos is contained in material such as floor tile, meaning there’s no risk that it might become airborne, Taylor said. As a result, passers-by may not realize that workers are removing the material by hand and machine inside the buildings, Taylor said.
Next week, Taylor said workers are expected to seal off the windows of one of the buildings and use a “negative pressure enclosure system” while removing the asbestos that’s more likely to release toxic particles.
The so-called “regulated asbestos-containing material” is slated to go to the Painted Desert landfill in Joseph City, Ariz.
One the three buildings set for asbestos abatement demolition, the cafeteria, has been a source of concern for historic preservationists because it is thought to contain New Deal-era murals done by artists and students at the school.
Demolition of the three buildings is scheduled for September through December between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.
An SFIS spokesman could not be reached for comment. School officials have said the buildings were being razed to protect the campus community as well as the public.
Velarde, of the Fire Department, said he hoped the training could occur over a week sometime after Labor Day. The sessions will provide a challenge to firefighters who are unfamiliar with the buildings, he said.
Velarde said a two-story building would allow crews to practice aerial rescues, while the surrounding piles of rubble resemble collapsed buildings sometimes found at disaster scenes.
Meanwhile, some of the buildings being razed are still only partially demolished, with crumbling walls standing amid the rubble.
Taylor said the reason some of the larger buildings were being leveled in stages is that workers need time to sort the debris into piles of metal and brick for recycling, while the unusable material is hauled to a dump.
Selling the recyclable debris defrays some of the hauling costs, Taylor said.
