(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch.
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Guthrie Center used city firefighter’s property for illegal training fire
['Jared Strong', 'More From Author', '- April']
Date: 2022-04-08 00:00:00
A western Iowa fire department conducted an illegal training simulation last year when it burned an old church building owned by one of its firefighters.
The building was not properly inspected for asbestos as required, and it had already been demolished, according to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
The former Church of the Open Bible was located on the east side of Guthrie Center, and its new owner, Grant Sheeder, planned to build a meat locker on the site. City officials have acknowledged that Sheeder is a member of the Guthrie Center Fire Department.
Disposal of the debris from a demolished building can cost thousands of dollars, but in July 2021, the DNR received notice of a training fire the Guthrie Center Fire Department planned to conduct at the church that month.
While cities are allowed to burn a limited number of demolished buildings each year, fire departments are allowed to set fire to standing buildings to practice their response to house fires. Fires for training purposes, the law says, do not “include the controlled burn of a demolished building.”
In an interview with the Iowa Capital Dispatch, Guthrie Center Fire Chief Tom Langgaard acknowledged “you’re not supposed to” use demolished buildings for training fires but said he worried about nearby electrical lines being too close to the building.
The old church was knocked down and its debris put into a pile. Langgaard said the resulting fire was good practice for his newer firefighters who have less experience handling fire hoses.
“It was still a training burn. I don’t care what you think about it,” Langgaard said.
Later that summer, someone complained to the DNR that the fire department had not properly inspected the building for asbestos, a hazardous material that can be dispersed into the air if it is disturbed.
A subsequent DNR investigation found that a city employee who was federally certified to do asbestos inspections had sampled materials from the building, but that he was not licensed to inspect private dwellings and had failed to sample flooring and insulation, according to a recent DNR administrative order. Further, the investigation revealed the notice for the training fire did not include the correct date of the fire.
“It’s a matter of opinion as far as I’m concerned,” Langgaard said of whether the city employee should be allowed to do the inspection. “It kind of ruffled my skin a little bit, but it’s one of those things you just pay to go away. … The DNR’s got way more power.”
The fire department agreed to pay a $1,500 fine for the violations, the administrative order said.
Tom Wuehr, the asbestos coordinator for the DNR’s Air Quality Bureau, investigated the violations and said it’s unlikely the former church contained asbestos as it was built in 1980.
“Basically, we got their attention,” he said of the fire department. “Now they’ve been educated.”
Wuehr said he did not know the building had been demolished before the fire but that the additional violation would have had little effect on the $1,500 fine.
The fact that a firefighter owned the building “makes us more suspicious” about the purpose of such burns because of the potential savings of disposal costs that are conferred to the building owner, Wuehr said, but “I wouldn’t have a problem with them doing a training fire or a demolished building burn, even though there’s a member of the fire department involved, as long as it’s for a valid purpose, and generally the valid purpose is for training.”
Wendy Wittrock, an environmental specialist in the DNR’s southwest office who was not involved in the Guthrie Center investigation, said she is aware of other training burns of buildings owned by firefighters but couldn’t say how common it is.
“It happens,” Wittrock said. “We see it happen across southwest Iowa, and we have seen it happen numerous times.”
DNR records show that a 2016 training fire in Guthrie Center involved a house owned by a different firefighter. The now-bare lot was one of several that have been consolidated into a 1.7-acre property on the north side of town with a newer house, according to county records.
The church building that was burned last year sold in 2013 to the Guthrie Center Area Development Corporation, which sold it to Guthrie County Quality Meats in May 2021, county records show.
The meat locker’s new building is nearing completion and is expected to open for business this year, according to announcements on its Facebook page.
Langgaard said the training fire was not meant to benefit Sheeder financially.
“We didn’t do it for a favor, anything like that,” Langgaard said.
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