(Radio Iowa) – A traveling training unit has been at Sioux City’s 185th Air National Guard Refueling Wing for the past three days, so members of the fire department at the base can practice responding to various scenarios. Master Sergeant Mitch Decker is the Assistant Chief of Fire Operations for the base.  “A little bit more controlled setting, but we do this for safety anyway,” he says. “We want people to be safe while they’re doing it. We don’t want anybody to get hurt. That’s not our goal, but it allows us at our own home station to train when we can’t get somewhere else.” Decker says aircraft fires usually involve large amounts of fuel, so the training helps firefighters review that unique challenge.

“If we had a crashed aircraft or a fire on that ramp, these are the tactics we would use to fight that fire,” he says. The Air Force firefighters were also training while wearing chemical warfare gear along with their regular gear underneath. “It’s very cumbersome. It’s hard to move around in. A lot of your agility is taken away. Dexterity with your hands is definitely affected because you’re wearing bulky gloves and you’ve got gloves underneath them,” he says. “It definitely presents a new challenge to it.”

The firefighters also practiced how and when to enter aircraft that are on fire.