- Photo by William Tauro

By William Tauro

The Somerville fire department conducted exercises for fire safety maneuvers this week with a “Flashover Trailer Unit”.  The trailer was provided to the Somerville fire department by the Department of Fire Services of the Massachusetts Firefighting Academy to simulate emergency fire situations.

The unit was set up and the exercises were carried out in the parking lot of Somerville’s Winter Hill Yacht Club, who generously donated the space to the department for the week.

The exercises consisted of a series of separate fires which were started inside the Flashover Trailer Unit by supervised department officials with firefighters inside the unit to simulate an emergency fire rescue scenario complete with smoke and flames as if it were the real thing.

Fire fighters were always manned outside the unit with a pumping engine with plenty of water to extinguish the fire as needed to ensure the occupant’s safety.