North County Fire EMS completed construction on the majority of Phase 1 of its new Firefighter Training Center on 11 Sep 2023. Phase 1 build-out includes a 5-story live-burn Training Tower Prop, a 2,680 square-foot modular classroom, an Instructor’s building, an Administration Building, and a restroom/shower facility. A Strip-Mall Training Prop is currently under construction and will complete the planned Phase 1 portion of the facility. 

The concept of building this facility was a combination of Fire Chief John Cermak’s vision and the expressed needs of the Snohomish County Firefighters Training Consortium. It identified the requirement for a more capable firefighter training facility that meets the demands of fire academy cadets. These cadets are needed to fill the growing number of vacancies among many of the fire departments across the entire Snohomish County.  NCRFA also leases the use of the facility to neighboring fire agencies as well as local community colleges for their specific training needs. To-date, the Snohomish County Firefighters Training Consortium has completed two highly successful Recruit Academies, with a third one scheduled to start on 16 Sep 2024.

This facility incorporates a state-of-the-art, environmentally safe water capture and recirculation system that supports a closed-loop hydrant system supplied by two underground water storage tanks serviced by a variable speed pump. This dedicated pump provides variable pressure to eight hydrants looped around two separate training pads that challenges pump operators with different pressure settings. These two training pads each house a live-burn training prop that only burn Class A (wood) fuels and are designed such that all water used by the firefighters to extinguish the training fires will be funneled back through a series of collection drains that will scrub the water prior to routing it directly back to the dedicated storage tanks.