Owego Regional Emergency Training Facility
(ORESTF)

Our Mission

• To provide a facility that will provide the necessary physical resources to meet the training needs for all emergency service providers in our region.

• To provide a place that offers a safe and realistic training environment for our Fire and EMS providers to practice and master their skills.

• To provide a location where emergency service providers can go to hear speakers, attend State courses, and perform training drills, without having to leave the county to do so.

Project Overview

The Owego Regional Emergency Services Training Facility (ORESTF) is a two-phase project to construct a fully faceted training facility for the public safety providers in our region.  This proposed training facility will provide a safe learning environment for all of the emergency responders in our county and surrounding area.  This will create a better-educated Emergency Services worker, but most importantly it will help to save countless lives over its lifetime.

The ORESTF site is located in the Village of Owego and was once the site of an old industrial creamery, which had partially burned in a large fire during the summer of 1999.  The property owned by the Village through tax default, was sold to the fire department for $1, to allow us to develop a training facility for the region.  Currently, our county does not have a facility for our first responders to go to obtain a realistic training environment and receive the necessary instruction to perform their duties to the best of their ability.  This project will consist of 6 separate elements located on the 2.2-acre site; 

1.      An Adult Learning Center with three classrooms and a Physical Fitness area.

2.      A multi-use training/ live fire burn building.  This will allow us to train on all facets of operations at a fire scene such as Fire Growth and Development, Fire Attack Methods/ Strategy, Search and Rescue Methods, Firefighter Survival/ Self Rescue, Ventilation Techniques and Ladder Usage and Placement.  Additionally it will provide a place for Police forces to train on room entry, entering and containing methamphetamine labs and working with K9 Units.

3.      Tower for training on ladder operations, rope rescues, and operational safety in an elevated environment, including ventilation techniques and confined space awareness.

4.      Area to conduct vehicle fire and extrication techniques, as well as hazardous materials evolutions.

5.      Water sources including hydrants and cisterns to allow for instruction and training in water mechanics and pump operations.

6.      Driver training course to develop safe driving skills and techniques.

Phase 1 entails the development of a 3,600 square foot building to provide Fire, EMS and Police agencies in and around our county a place to train in a realistic environment.  This building will be constructed to allow for live fire trainings, emergency medical evolutions as well as allowing police to train on room entry and search techniques.  It will contain four rooms that are fire resistive, and one large room that is not.  The large room will have the ability to be easily reconfigured to allow for flexibly and variability in training scenarios over time.  The fire resistive rooms will be protected with fire resistant tiles that allow the burning of Class I materials to educate first responders in fire growth and extinguishing techniques.  The driver training course, area for vehicle fire/ extrication, Hazardous Materials evolutions and Water training elements will be completed during this phase. 

Phase 2 of this project will consist of developing the Learning Center and completing the training tower.  The Learning center will contain three classrooms.  Two of the classrooms will be next to each other with the ability to be opened into one large classroom, to allow for larger groups.  These classrooms will provide departmental and State instructors with an environment that is conducive to learning.  Many classes taught to the Emergency Services have “hands on” components that are not suited to a normal classroom setting for fear of inflicting damage to the facility.  The third classroom in the Learning Center will be a “dirty” classroom, which will be constructed with durable materials.  This will allow for an interior space for class activities that are not suitable to the regular classrooms for fear of damage. 

The tower component of this phase will be several stories tall and will allow our public safety personnel a structure to develop their skills when dealing with elevated tasks such as the operation of ladders at an incident, tower ladder operations, rope rescues, and roof ventilation procedures.  This element will also be designed with a confined space component, allowing for instruction and training on this type of incident as well. 

 

Completed Site Plan