Incident Ground

Unique incident ground with world class facilities

We believe that no other organisation in the world can match the facilities offered by our unique incident ground at Moreton-in-Marsh.

Our 365-acre venue enables us to replicate:

Building fires
USAR scenarios
Train derailments
Motorway pile-ups
Ship rescues

But that’s not all. We also design challenging and complex training scenarios that really test the skill and ingenuity of firefighters and emergency responders at all levels.

This means that emergency services professionals can experience real live training situations to develop skills and techniques within a safe environment. We can even simulate multiple exercises to immerse your people in highly realistic situations.

What’s more, we can increase the complexity your teams face over time so that they learn how to tackle long-term, highly challenging situations. This enables everyone to gain the resilience and endurance skills they need to be effective in almost all situations.

Breathing Apparatus

Our specialist Breathing Apparatus (BA) School is used to train Urban Search & Rescue Paramedics, private sector companies and firefighters in the critical use of essential breathing apparatus equipment.

Our instructors ensure that the skills acquired are current and at the required standard for this highly specialised piece of equipment.

The BA school is the central hub for all courses delivered on the Incident ground. It is the central point for all basic training at the College and enables us to adapt and shape best practice from ideas from all over the world.

Urban Search and Rescue

Our renowned Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) facility consists of four buildings specifically designed to test all aspects of urban search and rescue training.

The first building contains three specialist indoor rigs. These enable us to plan progressive training and give firefighters valuable experience, incorporating many elements of USAR. Exercises include: working in confined spaces, carrying out search and rescue operations in a multi-level collapsed building and technical search. Delegates can also gain shoring, breaking and breaching skills.

We use this rig in many of our Incident Command courses as it enables a broad variety of incidents to be replicated to test Commanders in a realistic environment.

Fire Behaviour

We have 10 Fire Behaviour Units on site. These are highly flexible and enable us to simulate special fire conditions such as 'Flashover' and 'Backdraft'. Firefighters can gain experience of fire behaviour and learn specialist techniques to deal with these potentially lethal situation. Delegates are taught how these conditions are created and how they can be dealt with.

This training is an essential skill for a firefighter who is called upon to attend fires in building with high fire loadings like the ones found in a modern living environment.

Fire Screen

Our Fire screen facility is used to practically demonstrate the intense heat generated by different types of fires. This enables us to teach firefighters how to best approach fires as well as the optimum techniques for tackling and extinguishing them. Our trainers teach delegates how to tackle these fires and carry out a controlled ‘close down’ of a valve, which isolates the fuel supply and extinguishes the fire.

The Fire Screen is part of our Fire Spread area, which is a group of state the art LPG powered training rigs. This is one of the safest LPT training facilities in the world, due to the automatic flame recognition devices which we have incorporated into the design.

We train Oil and Gas Industry firefighters using these facilities to the JOIFF standard, and we will soon be accredited to offer offshore firefighting course to the OPITO standard.

Fire Investigation Unit

Our Fire Investigation Units enable us to stage fires that have been ignited from a broad variety of sources. We can then simulate various scenarios for specific firefighter groups and subsequently extinguish the fires. This provides a realistic and extremely wide-ranging environment for firefighters looking to enhance their skills in fire investigation.

These units replicate actual fires that are started by various means from discarded cigarettes to failing electrical appliances. Delegates are challenged to work with all the available evidence to discover how each incident started. To do this they need to adopt a systematic professional format for gathering evidence, making sure all evidence is preserved and recorded for any future legal requirement.

M96 - The Fire Service College Motorway

Delegates discover life in the fast line at the College on our very own motorway – the M96. Our M96 motorway is a realistic four-lane motorway (although a lot shorter than a real one). It’s a superb amenity and allows us to simulate a broad range of large scale vehicle incidents.

Teaching interoperability skills

We use this unique facility to train a broad range of delegates from across the ‘blue light’ emergency responder sector. It allows us to give them hands-on experience in the management techniques and practical skills needed to deal with large-scale traffic collisions and spillages.

The M96 facility is regularly used to train helicopter emergency personnel and newly qualified paramedics, as well as fire and rescue service personnel in multi-agency exercises. Due to its size as well as the fact that it is a life size replica of the real thing, emergency service responders can work together or ‘interoperability’ in a safe environment to resolve multi agency incident without putting themselves at unnecessary risk and without causing any disruption to major road routes.

RTC facility

The Road Traffic Collision (RTC) area is where delegates are exposed to the latest motoring technologies, which we have managed to gather in one place through our links with major motor manufacturers. All these are in a building so delegates have the opportunity to view them, discuss the associated hazards for rescuers and learn about the different techniques utilised across the UKFRS to mitigate the hazards posed.

We have close ties with the London Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) who are involved in all of our UK road traffic collision instructor courses. They provide specialist input on trauma care and support the entire range of exercises we offer to create an absolutely real experience for the firefighters responding to the incident.

Domestic Training Building

One of the most common fires is the household fire. Our domestic training facility enables us to create realistic domestic house scenarios to test out the skills and capability of firefighters of all levels.

The building is designed to resemble a traditional two storey, four bedroom house. It has 4 ground floor rooms, 6 first floor rooms and an attic bedroom in the loft. This is one of the most popular and best used facilities. Fires can be started in various rooms kitchen, living room or bedroom. This building is used on a wide range of courses, it is also used for Incident command training as various incidents can be replicated to test an incident commander.

Industrial High Rise fire training

We use our industrial high-rise facility give firefighters the experience of tackling high-rise situations. Arranged on six floors, this facility can be used for a range of hot fire or cold smoke training scenarios. We can replicate a scenario involving a radiation hazard in the garage area on the ground floor, radiation incidents are rare and this exercise really tests a fire officer.

This is an extremely versatile venue that can be used for a range of incident types, due to its size and its multi levels it is always a challenge to any firefighters working in side or commanding an incident on the outside.

Due to the recent high profile incidents involving high-rise fires, this facility has been used by a number of Fire & Rescue Services to test their standard operations procedures for responding to a high rise incident.

Industrial training facility

Our industrial facility is one of the most flexible of our training areas. We use it to simulate some of the key challenges faced by firefighters when working in a factory or industrial setting. It features a factory complex, complete with a boiler room in the basement as well as a linked building that contains living accommodation. There is also a realistic take-away food retail outlet (chip shop with frying range) where we simulate hot fat fires.

Trainees use the industrial facility in many different ways depending on the needs, experience and expertise of the attending crews and officers. This building is much utilised and can replicate various types of incident including fires in industrial retail units and hazardous material incidents. The basement can provide a challenging incident for crews to deal with due to the heat barrier that must be crossed to gain access to the basement to extinguish the fire. The basement has a foam inlet adapter which can be utilised during a basement fire scenario.

This building has been utilised by Military, Police, Paramedics and film crews in recent years, its large open areas on each floor lend themselves to flexible scenario building.

Multi use commercial building

This large concrete building can be used for a variety of exercise scenarios, including a shopping mall, a roll on/off ferry, prison breakout etc. Situated in a commanding position on the incident ground, it has four levels and can be approached from two sides on two different levels. One entrance is via a loading ramp on one side and the second is via shop store rooms in a walled courtyard on the other.

The building has both hot (live fire) and cold (smoke only) areas. There is a range of fully operational building services including ventilation extraction units for smoke control (as fitted to shopping malls), an escalator, an electric lift and a dry riser conforming to current British Standards.

The building is also a fantastic venue for large multi pump, multi agency incidents as fire commanders have the opportunity to sectorise the building; this can test the commanders skills in command and control in a multi agency environment.

Railway and carriages

The rail scenario was completely refurbished in 2012. We took advice and input from Network Rail which has enabled us to create one of the UK’s premier rail training facilities.

This totally unique facility includes a section of ‘permanent way’ complete with rail lines, third rail, OLE electrification and a rail platform. There are also a locomotive and several different carriages on a real track. The carriages have cold smoke generating capability to facilitate search and rescue exercises. Our Rail facility can also be used to simulate most common and major rail incidents, including level crossing failure and accidents.

We have created a ‘real’ rail derailment area with a number of rail carriages mounted on the station platform to simulate a major incident. This facility is regularly used by Railtrack and Network Rail as part of their training courses, its size makes it ideal for large scale multi agency exercises.

Marine and ship training

The ‘Sir Henry’ is a faithful replica of a real ship complete with bridge, forward and aft holds, engine room, vertical ladders and propeller shaft tunnel as well as confined space entry. The ship is berthed in dock and enables us to set up challenges involving loading,unloading, refit, embarkation etc, as necessary.

Training on the ship is regularly undertaken with outside agencies including members of the armed forces, who use the Ship Training facility to give their helicopter pilots ‘real fire’ training.

These multi- agency exercises allow the firefighting teams and equipment to be winched on and off the ship as part of the exercise. It also offers commanders the opportunity of working with harbour masters, ship captain and also other emergency services. The ship provides a highly realistic dockside environment surrounding the ship which enables incidents to be run directly into the dock area.

We attract many customers from across Europe to the College who come to use the highly realistic interior of the ship to carry out ship fire fighting techniques.

Oil Rig

Our oil rig has been specially designed in a block configuration incorporating a number of different levels. These include accommodation and work areas etc which are interlinked to simulate a real oil rig. The rig has been built with a silo and helicopter-pad enabling it to be used to practise a range of different fire and rig incidents involving LPG and oil fires as well as chemical and radiation leaks.

In addition to the rig being used as an advanced fire fighting training facility, it is also used to assess incident and trauma management capabilities of delegates and organisations.

The rig provides excellent training for commanders due to its complex layout and the realistic hazards associated with these environments. Due to the combination of state of the art LPG rigs that operate from on top of this facility, we can set up highly realistic carbonaceous burns inside the rig as well as large oil tray burns on the outside. This enables us to build a broad number of scenarios which can demonstrate how fire can spread throughout an oil rig which can lead to the rapid escalation of the incident, leading to the creation of a real challenge to the emergency responders.

Many Industrial firefighting teams utilise our Oil Rig as it is an excellent replica of the industrial environment in which they normally operate.

Facilities