Franklin Square Fire Department unveils new training facility

Franklin Square firefighters will soon be able to train at a practice facility closer to home: The Franklin Square and Munson Fire Department unveiled a new three-story-tall training structure last week.

The facility, located behind the department’s headquarters on Liberty Place, was designed by American Fire Training Systems and cost $282,000. Fire Department officials said that a $50,000 community revitalization program grant from Nassau County contributed to the purchase. The rest of the cost was covered by the department’s building and grounds reserve.

“This training facility will help ensure that our firefighters receive the best training possible to keep themselves safe while keeping our communities safe,” County Legislator John Giuffre said in a Facebook post when he presented the grant to the department.

The facility features a number of props that firefighters will use to hone their skills, which will give them the opportunity to closely approximate, and prepare for, real-world situations. There will be artificial smoke generators, and each floor will have a standpipe to hook a hose to. A bail-out egress atop the facility, accessible above the third floor, will allow firefighters to practice evacuating from a fire from high above ground.

To train for breaking through jammed doors, the structure has forcible-entry doors. A roof-cutting prop on top, slanted and finished with shingles, recreating the roof of a commercial or residential building, offers another point of preparation.

The facility has window openings from which firefighters can train to rappel when needed. And on the first and second floors, there are prop walls on rolling tracks that can be used to build rooms of varying layouts. Some of the walls have holes at the bottom to recreate confined spaces that firefighters may have to crawl through in real-world emergencies.

“Pretty much anything you would get at a state-of-the-art fire academy anywhere, we have it all confined into one building on a smaller scale,” Chief Joseph Gerrato said.

The first department members to familiarize themselves with the facility will be members of the department’s training committee.

“Most importantly, it’s going to be here in town, so it will help out our volunteers, instead of (their) having to travel out of town for training,” Gerrato said. Department members have previously trained at the Nassau County Fire Service Academy in Old Bethpage. Members of other local departments will be also invited to train in Franklin Square.

The volunteers will still train each year at the academy, but the Franklin Square facility will enhance their preparedness for fire calls. It will also be useful for junior firefighters, Gerrato said.

“(They’ll) get the same experience we get, but in a much safer atmosphere,” he said.

The new facility replaced an old propane trailer that had been at the Fire Department for 25 years or so, and was used for training.

The acquisition of the new facility took two years, department officials said. Former Franklin Square Fire District Commissioner Joseph Torregrossa was involved in the project, despite battling illnesses that resulted from his work at the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks. Torregrossa was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia and prostate cancer in 2014. Seven years later, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. He died last year.

“During that time when he was going to treatments, he was very active in making sure that the plans were being done,” Gerrato said. “Making sure that we were getting every possible training option and prop in it that we could.”

In honor of Torregrossa’s contributions, Fire Commissioner and Board Chairman Dennis Lyons said the facility would be named after him.