It may not look like much, but the old water filtration plant on Dane Lane along the railway line near Jack Brabham Park could be NSW's new state-of-the-art Rural Fire Service training base.
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RFS Canobolas Zone inspector Nils Waite has taken on the project of giving the old facility a rebirth, and is seeking $1 million from the RFS' piggy bank of $51 million donated over the fire season.
The former filtration plant was used through the 1970s and 80s before being decommissioned 20 years ago when it was replaced with the current plant on Ophir Road.
Mr Waite's vision for the site would be to install four "rooms" - set up like a bedroom, kitchen, lounge room and study - with gas props and the ability to light other props on fire to simulate responding to blazes in houses.
There are also four old water tanks outdoors which could be converted into enclosed spaces for practising extinguishing car fires or gas pumps in a safe environment year-round, without fear of sparking grass fires, while State Emergency Service and Fire and Rescue staff could use the liftwell at the eastern end of the building for training.
Facilities which would - hopefully, and if the funding comes through - be world-class, attracting RFS volunteers from across the state to train in the city.
"That's the aim, to get a state of the art facility because every other state in the country has you beaut facilities and we've got a mish-mash and bodge of stuff," Mr Waite said.
"Now we've got this big pool of money sitting there and I don't want them to waste it.
"I want to drag a million bucks out of them if I can. A million dollars would see us have an excellent facility here, all contained in these four concrete walls more or less."
The million dollars will be needed, too - the site is in a state of disrepair and needs plenty of work to be made usable.
This would simulate more or less real conditions rather than calling a concrete block a car and trying to deal with it.
- RFS Canobolas Zone inspector Nils Waite
Mr Waite had to bring in a company from Sydney to cut through the 20 centimetre-plus thick solid concrete walls of the facility to give it doors and windows, which had a $30,000 price tag on its own.
They'll need to come back, too - to remove the solid blocks of concrete still on the floor and to provide access to the outdoor areas, while a working bee cleared out old piping - but the nature of the building means it'll withstand having up to 400-degree fires being lit inside it.
"It's not going to deteriorate," Mr Waite said.
"As long as you've got the flame it doesn't have to be hot, it's about the principles involved and how you fight it back and knock it down and that sort of stuff.
"It's understanding the science of what goes on inside the room."
Using gas props and a smoke machine would also be much cleaner than conventional burning and better for the environment - "it would be as clean as you can get".
The million dollar price-tag should see the facility completed, with the land been lent to the Rural Fire Service by Orange City Council.
"Instead of [them] spending a couple of hundred thousand to knock it down we might be able to use it," Mr Waite said.
While he said funding had improved over the last decade, Mr Waite still remembered times when the RFS - jokingly - needing to "beg, borrow and steal" props for training, or make do.
"This would simulate more or less real conditions rather than calling a concrete block a car and trying to deal with it," he said.
If Mr Waite and the Canobolas Zone can get the funds out of the RFS, the facility could be up and running "this time next year" - but they've got "no clue" how close they are to securing the money, which would rival Fire and Rescue NSW's Kemps Creek facility.
"It all depends on what head office is doing. Training is always the first thing which gets cut in any budget so we don't always we had a great amount of money," Mr Waite said.
"I feel like this could make us a bit more professional."
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