The Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Wichita has offered the use of a building on its campus to be used by the Wichita Fire Department for training.
The four-story building at 3700 East Lincoln will be deconstructed on September 21st and its materials will be repurposed or donated. Before then, the building will be made available to the Fire Department, and it will be used to train for operations such as search and rescue, evacuation, fire prevention and more. Residents in the area will see fire vehicles and personnel and there will be sounds associated with the training exercise. No live fire or explosive training exercises will be done in the building to ensure that its materials may be reused.
The order is allowing use of the building to support training that could help save lives in the community. The Wichita Fire Department is expressing gratitude for the use of empty buildings for these exercises, as it allows firefighters to train for real life scenarios in unfamiliar environments similar to what they may face in an active emergency situation.
The use of the building for fire training is especially fitting, as the building was constructed in 1915 after a 1913 fire destroyed the original home for the order, which was built in 1887.
