Hundreds of children lived out their dreams of being a firefighter Sunday by taking fire truck rides, putting out faux fires and learning about tools of the trade.
The Manhattan Fire Department’s annual open house drew over 800 community members to the department’s training facility to learn about fire prevention.
The event serves as the culmination of the department’s education efforts throughout the fire prevention week, when firefighters visit local schools to teach young students about fire safety.
“This kind of brings it all together,” fire captain Andy Rombeck said. “The kids have helmets at school, coloring books about fire safety. They come here and they get to see it all in action. They get to put all the pieces together.”
The open house also highlighted the department’s specialized emergency response capabilities, including its technical rescue, hazardous materials and drone teams. Stations throughout the training facility offered attendees a chance to see equipment up close and see demonstrations. Old Engine 1 — a 1947 Model 700 American LaFrance and Manhattan’s oldest fire engine — took residents for rides and children got to climb into the driver’s seat of numerous other firefighting vehicles.
Firefighters gave demonstrations on various aspects of their work, including emergency response tools, pulley systems, fire prevention and drone and fire hose operation.
A focus of the event was education on safely charging devices like electric bikes, scooters and hoverboards, which Rombeck said can pose a major hazard.
Beyond public education, the department’s training facility plays a significant role in preparing firefighters for emergencies. Department members complete roughly 200 hours of training per person each year, Rombeck said.
However, he said the facility’s aging infrastructure limits the types of training firefighters can conduct.
The concrete training tower was well suited to its time, but its outdated design restricts realistic exercises. Firefighters cannot conduct live-fire training inside the tower, and its internal water system no longer works. The department can no longer use the system to practice connecting hoses to simulated sprinkler systems or fire department connections in a stairway.
The department’s burn building is also near the end of its service life.
“We’re still able to use it, but it’s not modern with what the city has,” Rombeck said.
Rombeck said a proposed replacement training facility would better reflect the buildings firefighters encounter throughout Manhattan, including practice apartment buildings three to four stories tall. The department has worked with a design specialist and assembled a team to identify local target hazards that the facility should represent.
The department has been planning to relocate its training grounds because its current location at Kimball Avenue and Denison Avenue is on state property. In 2023, officials said the church behind Fire Station 3 on Amherst Avenue had sold the department 9 acres for a new training facility.
The relocation process and plans for the new facility remain undetermined. Rombeck said the lease for the current location was previously expected to end within the next couple of years, but that timeline is now subject to renegotiation.
He said one possible short-term solution would be to bring in a temporary training structure with a five- to 10-year service life that would allow firefighters to conduct live-fire exercises while the department works toward a permanent facility. Rombeck said that option has not been finalized.
Rombeck also emphasized the sacrifices firefighters’ families make while their loved ones work shifts and respond to emergencies.
“When you see a firefighter out on a scene, on a call, on shift, just know that there’s probably a family at home or a family that loves them out there that they’re sacrificing things to be on shift, on duty, serving the community that day,” Rombeck said.