Members of Athens Fire & Rescue and Clements Volunteer Fire Department held a controlled burn at a house near the end of Lindsay Lane two weekends ago as a training exercise.

When a neighborhood home burns to the ground, it usually represents a devastating loss to a family. Though a house burned two weekends ago near the end of Lindsay Lane, this time the conflagration may actually save something. Or someone.

Athens Fire & Rescue hosted a controlled burn at a residence the weekend of Dec. 4-5 as a training exercise in structure fires. Fire Chief Al Hogan said the event was about as close as firefighters can get to the real deal while keeping things safe in a controlled environment.

The house sat on land purchased for upcoming Buc-ee’s Athens construction and was set to be demolished anyway, so the people who acquired the home approached Hogan and asked if the fire department would like to use the structure for training.

Hogan said such exercises are hard to conduct these days due to the amount of regulations involved, but in this case he said “everything aligned” for the department to go ahead with the procedure.

“They had everything hazardous like carpets and shingles removed,” Hogan said. “It was situated in an area where the burn wasn’t going to affect anything else, it was in a good spot and the weather cooperated. We took the opportunity to get some live fire training in a structure.”

Hogan said his training officer had to do a lot of legwork to make sure the burn complied with all standards, saying it was an “undertaking.”

He said his department was able to hold the drills in conjunction with the volunteer department from Clements, which has a mutual aid agreement with Athens. The burn also fulfilled a required annual joint-training between the two departments mandated by the agreement.

“None of the guys here had ever been in a burn of an acquired structure before,” Hogan said. “They have been offered a few places in the past, but those didn’t work out. We can’t burn every house someone wants us to. The situation has to be right, and this fit.”

Hogan said the departments set fire to one room at a time in the home, starting with an upstairs bedroom. They would evaluate the blaze until that part of the structure was about to become unstable, then crews would put the fire out.

The group then moved to a different area of the house and repeated the procedure until it was time light the final blaze that eventually full engulfed the structure.

“We lit it off and watched it go through the progression,” Hogan said. “Everyone could see the different stages of a fire.”

Though Athens firefighters have a training building to hold similar exercises in, Hogan said it’s not the same as an actual structure fire, and even though the group got to train in a home this time around, even that was not completely true to life.

“There were doors removed and no furniture in place due to safety measures, and we knew this fire was coming,” he said. “We had hazards boarded up or removed, but it’s just about as close as you can get to the real thing without an actual fire. All training is good training.”