The International Fire Training Centre (IFTC), based at Durham Tees Valley Airport, has been delivering fire training to the world’s aviation, offshore, petrochemical and maritime sectors for over 50 years.
It used to be part of the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority, up until 1996, when Serco acquired the business. Serco invested in the centre, focusing in particular on the development of new training rigs and the introduction of a greater variety of training scenarios. It also focused on protecting the surrounding environment from damage as a result of the exercises.
The delegates experience scenarios that mimic situations that could arise in their real-life working environments. For aviation, simulators include smaller to large (Category 10) aircraft, and involve a range of spill, pressurised and internal fire situations. This is supported with military, rotary wing and real airframes for further realistic training. Industrial and offshore training comprises a simulated platform with helideck, various industrial scenarios and a fully interlinked breathing apparatus facility, designed to test the most experienced of delegates.
“When we run a course,” says Chris Brown, Technical Support Manager at IFTC, “we seek to give an experience as near as possible to the real thing. And once you’ve finished an exercise, you can’t let all that water, with the foam and fuel and other impurities, just go into the river. It would be terrible for wildlife. So we contain, manage and treat it on-site.” The waste created by the exercises – a mix of water, oil, foam and solids – goes into the drainage system. From there, it flows to a treatment plant where a tilt-plate system separates the oil, which is skimmed off into a channel to be reclaimed. The rest then goes into a standing interceptor, where it sits until the solids settle. Then the water and foam is pumped to the lagoon, which contains a special variety of reed that lives on the foam. Once the reeds have digested the foam, the water is reused. “Our processes have been agreed with the Environment Agency (EA),” says Chris. “We’re also on first name terms with local farmers, and we keep a close eye on the wind to make sure we don’t smoke anyone out. We are visited every year by children of the firefighters who were at Chernobyl. We try to put something back into the community.”
