Shelbyville Fire Department places renewed emphasis on training younger firehouse crews

With an ever-increasing workload and one of its youngest personnel groupings in decades, the Shelbyville Fire Department places great value on training and shared experiences.

“Each new fireman goes through a lot of schooling and training to obtain certifications that are required to be a good applicant on paper,” explained Shelbyville Fire Department Deputy Chief of Fire Operations Jay Tennell. “They have already gone through years and time to get the information but they haven’t put it to the boots on the ground type of stuff. That is what we do in their first year, really hammer that hard. As soon as they come through the door we are having them in gear, not just testing them but at the same time letting them know the basics of how we operate and what is expected of them.”

In 2023, SFD logged 6,028 calls. The department expected to be near 5,000 calls this year by the end October. SFD is currently fully-staffed, according to Tennell, but there are 13 full-time firefighters age 25 or younger.

“That’s a nice place for us to be in because we’ve been in a catch up phase for the last two to three years with some turnover,” said Tennell. “That turnover caused a lot of goods and bads. Losing the experience but we got a lot of new, fresh, good positivity coming in all the time. That is fun and it keeps us working on lots of things. Even if it is just for 2-3 guys, everyone is getting a refresher or review (with training).”

The newer personnel are spread over three shifts in three separate firehouses in Shelbyville.

“I think everyone here can see the 12-14 new individuals we have here, spread over three shifts, everybody has a new or newer person, whether it’s six months or 18 months they’ve been here, there are things they haven’t seen yet,” said Tennell. “And we have a lot of guys here that want to help share with them. I think it keeps us fresh and keeps us sharp.”

The SFD uses in-house and live fire training locally; travels to Camp Atterbury in Edinburgh for incline rope rescue training; and visits the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center near Butlerville that offers a variety of rescue options including flood and natural disaster situations.

Just over a decade ago, the SFD started constructing a live fire training area at the Shelby County Fairgrounds. The experience it provides is invaluable, according to Tennell.

“I think it was in 2013 we started building this facility out here,” said Tennell (photo). “At the time (Fire Chief Tony Logan) allowed us to pursue it and raise some money locally to buy some of those shipping containers. The idea behind that was some of the bigger departments were burning live fire inside there to where you put it out, sweep it out, clean it out and its back to the same function.

“That allowed us to really start to go somewhere with the conditions. That’s the biggest worry with the new firemen. You can read about it. You can watch the videos. You can put on all the gear and actually go do it, but the night its 900 degrees and you are trying to decide how to operate, with what’s safe and what’s not to keep your mind right. You can’t duplicate that. You can’t just practice dealing with the zero visibility.”

Movies and television shows struggle to maintain the realism of a fully-engulfed building with fire and smoke and maintain the ability to film the actors. Firefighters do not have the luxury of a director yelling “Cut!”

“You can watch a movie and think is that really how it is in a fire? I think everybody, if they thought hard about it, it’s not realistic,” said Tennell. “You can’t see. It’s uncomfortable and without a lot of the right training and exposure to it, you are not going to be comfortable. That’s what we try to drive home with all of our younger guys. When they do get themselves in a situation, we’ve already talked about it and physically practiced. This is what we are gaining from that. It has changed us a lot I think.”

Tennell’s goal with live fire training is to create different scenarios then monitor how the situation is handled. And it’s not just a focus on the younger first responders. The training is equally beneficial for veteran firefighters now in supervisory roles.

“Every other month we do actual live fire training, which takes some coordination and we have to do a lot of precautions to stay consistent and safe. Then when the crews show up, it’s as if they are showing up on a fire scene,” he said. “That’s where you take some pretty good steps to seeing how we are doing. I watch as one of the chiefs to see how we function and it surfaces a lot of things we are not considering. It allows those young guys to see how we are going to function when we show up and what their roles are and what is expected of them.

Muscatatuck Urban Training Center

The recent scenes of hurricane damage in North Carolina and Florida brought a renewed spotlight on the need for water rescue teams. Tennell is extremely proud of Shelbyville’s Swift Water Rescue Team that is made up of local firemen and Shelby County Sheriff deputies. The team trains once a month to be prepared for multiple scenarios.

“It’s a unique thing,” admitted Tennell. “People get trapped in the water. We do have three rivers here that cause a lot of problems – Blue River, Flat Rock and Sugar Creek. And all our creeks channel to those.”

The Swift Water Rescue Team will train on the White River to simulate bigger water rescues and staged a recent training session at the Muscatatuck Urban Center to prepare for a significant flooding event.

“You can’t get good experience without physically putting on all the stuff, and pretending, in a sense, that there are people counting on us,” said Tennell. “Whether it’s a dam rescue or flooded rivers that are in homes where people are trying to decide if they want to leave. Water comes up another three feet at night and they are sitting on their kitchen counter with water three feet in their home and they don’t know what to do.”

Camp Atterbury

The rope tower facility at Camp Atterbury provides real-life training for raising and lowering individuals that need assistance.

“Muscatatuck is a great training area for us. We also go over to Camp Atterbury to a rope tower and practice a lot of our high incline rope rescue stuff,” said Tennell. “Whether it’s us here off of cell towers or bridges or down in pits in factories, there is always the opportunity we are going to need to raise or lower someone that can’t do it themselves, whether they are unconscious, have a broken leg or are trapped.”

In late 2023, SFD received a new ladder truck which is stationed on the city’s east side at Fire Station No. 2. At the time the ladder truck was ordered, SFD also purchased three new ambulances that have yet to arrive. They are in the final stages of production in Florida and Tennell hopes to push them into service later this month.

“When trucks are due to be replaced and you don’t get them when promised, it hurts us in a lot of ways,” said Tennell. “Doing that many calls, these ambulances are on the road and you need to see every part is working correctly because it’s an emergency situation.”

The SFD currently keeps three ambulances in service with two more older models in reserve. The arrival of three new ambulances will allow the department to retire the two reserve ambulances and move the current rigs into reserve roles.

“This will allow us to move our current reserve ambulances out the door because they are almost 30 years old,” said Tennell. “We will be in a much better situation then.”

Shelbyville’s footprint is growing larger every year. With the development of Intelliplex Park and a casino located on the city’s north side, there is an increasing need for a fourth fire house in the area.

There are also more than 1,000 new homes slated to be built in 2025 and beyond which means the city is looking at population growth which puts added stress on emergency services.

Tennell is appreciative of the city’s push to continue recruitment of firefighters when needed and the importance of keeping SFD fully-staffed across its current three firehouses.

“We are extremely busy … a unique size with 60 firemen and just three stations with an increasing workload in a growing city,” said Tennell. “We are big enough to be extremely busy but we are still small enough to make things work with limited people. It’s a little challenging and very fun.”

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