City Council has approved a recommendation to build a fire training facility.

The cost is around $260,000.

Fire Chief Jason Whiteley says currently firefighters have to go Sudbury for training.

“By the time you rent the facility to get all 72 firefighters trained you’re looking at seven times to rent that facility. The cost of gettng them down there, the cost of instructors and then the overtime costs because you can’t do it with on duty personnel,” he says.

Whiteley says the project will see engineered sea containers made into buildings.

“One is going to be a multi-storey, multi-discipline building in which we can do a bunch of different training scenarios,” he says. “The second structure we’re building will be a live-burn facility.”

The intial plan was to have one of the buildings in West Ferris, but they’re also in talks with Canadore to have something at the Commerce Court campus.

Whiteley expects the first building to be complete within six months.

(File photo)

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