WATCH: Students Praise Upgrades at PIT Firefighting Training Center

Firefighting can be intimidating.

“Coming into it I had some nerves,” said Brendan Swafford, an aviation management student who is taking a 40-hour Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting (ARFF) course at Pittsburgh International Airport’s newly upgraded Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting Training Center.

“I have zero experience in all of this coming out, but with the Pittsburgh International ARFF team, they have been great. I feel confident in myself now,” he said. “I am surrounded by people with years of experience, great training.”

PIT’s fire training center now features a brand-new wet deck system that was installed in the summer, removing all the old gravel around the simulator that firefighters walk on while training, and all the piping underneath the gravel. Now, shallow water that firefighters can walk on surrounds the simulator.

A wet deck system “floats the propane for the fires up through a pool of water rather than up through a pool of gravel,” said Tim Llewellyn, Deputy Fire Chief.