City of Darlington fire department were given thousands of dollars worth of supplies for a training facility to be built close to home.
Saturday morning firefighters and volunteers started bright and early smashing and loading various supplies they’ll need.
“What you see is a total of seven shipping containers, a bunch of expanding metal, and we got a company donating time to pick it up and transferring them over to Washington St. where we will reassemble them for a training center,” said fire chief, Patrick Cavanaugh.
A local company called, BB Hobbs, saw the need and gave a hand for those who risk their lives every day.
“They wanted to get rid of some, so they gave them to us. It’s about a $20,000 gift for us,” said Lt. Johnny Deas.
Without a local training facility, firefighters were facing a big problem, but that won’t be the case with the donated storage and shipping containers they received.
“When you want to train firefighters you had to either send them away from your department to Columbia or somewhere else. It’s hard for a volunteer to find time to leave and travel out,” said Cavanaugh.
The burn building will be used for multiple purposes as well.
“We can do live burn training, rescue training, and we’re also opening this up for the city. Our police department can use it for any kind of training. It’s a facility we can all use,” said Cavanaugh.
Saturday morning was just the first step because there’s still a long way to go. “It will take a year to get the training center up and going,” said Deas.
