ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — A flurry of activity with bulldozers and dump trucks is crisscrossing the training behind Fire Station One and the Fire Administration building in Orange Beach as the city prepares to be a regional training site for the Alabama State Fire College.

The Alabama State Fire College decided to go regional with 10 sites around the state and Orange Beach Fire and Rescue will be a big part of that effort.

“We can only go as fast as time and budget allows, but we’ve got pretty big plan overall,” Administrative Fire Chief Wade Stevens said. “It’s something we need as an individual department and we feel it will be beneficial outside of the regional aspects. That’s one of the big primary pushes to go ahead and make some of the improvements out there to help facilitate a lot more training as we bring the regional classes in.”

It was announced in May that the city would partner with both the fire college, which is based in Tuscaloosa, and Columbia Southern College in Orange Beach to offer the training.

“We’re trying to make ourselves a training destination and we think it’s going to be great,” Stevens said. “We’re hoping to pull instructors from all of the fire departments in the region, get them involved. That’s kind of the concept of the regional campus. It benefits the whole region and it utilizes the personnel you have in reach to make it all work.”

Firefighter Suzanne Moeller has been selected to be the onsite coordinator for Orange Beach and will work with former Gulf Shores Chief Tim Blakemore, the fire college coordinator for Region 4, and with Columbia Southern officials to coordinate the classes.

“She’s going to be taking our training from this point forward and she’ll coordinate with the Fire College and the regional coordinator and work out the classes and scheduling and all of that,” Stevens said. “She also handles our in-house training and is working to take care of a lot of our needs there.”

Before the training field can be completed, Stevens said, the first step is the excavation and leveling work going on now.

“They are working on the total site excavation to try and level out the site and get it prepared for what will essentially be a road,” he said. “There will be a lot of small individual sites where you’ll have several different types of training props and things you can stop at so you can set up for individuals.

“They’ve got to bring some areas up, take some areas down and we’ve got a hillside out there. They’ll be working on that for several weeks.”

But when it is complete, Stevens said the field will combine the best aspects of other sites around the state.

“We’re basing it off the nice facility they have there at the state fire academy,” he said. “There are some other places around the state that have a nice facility and around the country, really. What we’re doing is essentially taking the good parts of those facilities and planning for those things here in the future.”

Everything will be built around the existing burn building and the first improvement on the field was installed around it.

“We’ve got a very nice burn building and training tower that we’ve had for some years now,” he said. “We haven’t been able to use it to its full potential because of some budget constraints that were in place when we build that.

“The first thing we’ve actually already done is complete the concrete apron around that. It’s going to allow us to do more driver training and setting up aerial apparatus and things of that nature around the facility.”

Eventually the two gravel road entrances will be paved and a paved road will loop through the field behind the burn building. The loop will include a road just beyond the burn building and one on the back of the lot near the fence.

“In between the two roads will be props and also down both sides,” Stevens said. “Props like a natural gas tree which is a big open, burning tree and they have to go in and shut the gas off while it’s burning. We’ll have confined space props, we’ll have roof props. We’re looking long term to doing everything from tanker cars for hazardous materials to other stuff out here so we have a full facility.

“We eventually hope to have a rail car to do some training like with hazardous materials that you can practice not only fire suppression and train with that kind of equipment, but also leaks for hazmat.”

An outdoor, but covered classroom will be on the east side of the burn building.

“From that point we’ve moved on with an outdoor classroom pavilion so that we have a nice clean, controlled environment to teach the outdoor portion of those classes that don’t necessarily fit in an indoor classroom,” Stevens said. “You’ve got a shady environment and still have adequate seating and audio visual displays and that sort of thing.”

Future improvements also include the use of natural gas in the burn building and expansion of the water flow to the two hydrants already on the training field.

“We’ve got the natural gas to the tower and the hope is to one day put a natural gas heater in it,” Stevens said. “It’s what a lot of your nicer towers do. I’d guess you’d say it’s a little safer. You can control the heat a little more evenly.”