East Jefferson Fire Rescue to conduct training burn
Published 1:30 am Saturday, March 28, 2026
PORT TOWNSEND — East Jefferson Fire Rescue will conduct a training burn on Tuesday on Umatilla Road between San Juan Avenue and Silver Street.
The structure was offered to the fire district by the property owner for non-destructive and destructive training prior to full demolition of the building.
Following several live fire training exercises, the final event will be a full burning of the building.
Firefighters are required to maintain live fire training credentialing every three years per National Fire Protection Association standards.
EJFR typically utilizes the Fire Training Center at Station 2 on Jacob Miller Road in Port Townsend for annual live fire training, rotating through one of three shifts each year. The training center is equipped with metal shipping containers where small fires are used to reinforce hose deployment and fire suppression technique training. These containers are durable but do not reflect a standard home or business structure very well, the fire district stated in a news release.
“The benefit of doing live fire training in an acquired structure like this is that it provides an unfamiliar, but typical, residential configuration where more complex training opportunities including search and rescue, firefighter safety and recovery, smoke control and ventilation techniques, breaching of wall and doors, and analysis of fire and smoke flow patterns are possible,” the fire district stated. “Secondly, the level of control of the environment allows for focus on repetitive, technical training by multiple teams and reduced exposure to toxic chemicals released by burning of modern interior furnishings. True structure fires do not allow for such repetition and have significant toxic exposures.”
Equipment staging will begin at 8 a.m. Tuesday and training exercises are scheduled for about 10 a.m.
The public will not be allowed to go into the protected area. A section of Umatilla Road will be closed to through traffic during the event.
Efforts will be made to limit public exposure to smoke during the burning through strategic ventilation points that direct heat and smoke to rise vertically, the fire district said.
The training event will not disrupt EJFR’s normal daily staffing and commitment of responding to 911 emergencies. Personnel assigned to the training event are not on shift that day, the fire district said.
