ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – The Orange Beach Fire Department turned a nuisance house on Gulf Bay Road into a training exercise as they burned it on Thursday afternoon.

The burn was monitored by Battalion Chief and Training Officer Kevin Lanford and volunteers from Ono Island, or Orange Beach Station 4, used the opportunity to handle hoses in a real fire situation.

“This gives us a good training opportunity,” Lanford said. “I’m concerned about the neighbors and what direction the wind is blowing. Don’t want to smoke anyone out if we can help it. That’s always the goal.

“Today is ideal. You hope that conditions are right and cooperate and today is perfect.”

Also, rookie Blake Hartly got his first experience on a fire scene and watched the fire being lit and worked on the front porch and steps of the house. The house was on a canal just off Wolf Bay in the Captain’s Cove area.

“The object today is to obviously bring it down,” Lanford told Orange Beach fire service members before the burn began. “We’ve trained some it in already, but no fire because we had weather, staffing, state park fire issues.

“It’s part training for us and Ono and part to help the property owner out and alleviate some problems for the city.”

The main objective of the day was to have the Ono volunteers man and advance hoses and learn how to handle them with teamwork.

“We don’t want to squirt a lot of water because we don’t want to put the fire out,” Lanford said. “The goal is to burn up some of that house and let it fall. Whatever doesn’t burn, the property owner gets to come and take away.”

Jack Miller, one of the Ono volunteers, was looking forward to the training, but not necessarily the aftermath.

“This is the fun part,” he said as he and the other volunteers gathered up for instructions. "Later we’ve got to go back and clean everything. Might as well enjoy the fun part first, right?”

The volunteers took turns manning and supporting the hoses as the fire grew from a spark to a conflagration in 10 minutes or less.

“That’s why smoke detectors are so important,” Lanford said. “Fires spread quickly and the smoke detectors give you plenty of warning and time to react.”

The Ono volunteers made the most of their training opportunity.

“The majority of what they do will be exterior stuff,” Lanford said. “They will be outside. Mainly I want us to support the Ono crews, watch them and kind of guide them.”

“A lot of them are new and most of them have never even seen a fire even from the exterior,” Battalion Chief Wade Stevens, who was on hand to take photos, said. “This gives them a chance to see how a fire behaves and how fast it goes from ignition all the way to fully involved.”