 A group of local firefighters spent a recent day burning an acquired house for training purposes. Clayton Castle met up with the group at the house in Otter Tail and filed this report. It was hot in Otter Tail on Saturday morning, not because of the weather, but because of an acquired structure burn put on by the fire and EMS program at Central Lakes College. The training exercise brought together both new and veteran firefighters from a number of local fire departments. The New York Bills Fire Department came up with this structure, so we come together with all these departments and we do training burns. Teach firefighters how to be better firefighters. There were multiple levels of burns performed based on the firefighters' experience. So new firefighters, they do what we call level one burns. So they get to go in and we slowly build it in front of them so they get to see the fire behavior and learn what it does when we put water on the fire. Veteran firefighters get what we call a level two burn. It's a little more involved fire, it's a little hotter, and they get to use some more advanced techniques to put out the fire. While massive house fires don't necessarily happen as regularly in rural communities as urban communities, the extra training still teaches a valuable lesson to all firefighters regardless of experience. You know, we need to respect the fire. We need to understand how our gear and equipment works and how well it works, and we need them to become comfortable with it. You know, look at the firefighters, they're not comfortable with fire. Now while this exercise was for both new and veteran firefighters, even the veteran firefighters still learned something from the experience. The importance of training, just getting used to what you're going to deal with in real life. If an actual fire does happen, which they do all the time, it's good to experience this while you're in a controlled environment where you've got safety, you've got people to back you up right there ready to go. The lessons learned here are key to performing the heroic actions of firefighters at the benefit of the community, which is why many are in the profession. Just to help out my local community and, you know, the help was needed and I live around here every day, so it's just the right thing to do. Reporting in Otter Tail Clayton Castle, Lakeland News. The Salvation Army provided free food and water to the firefighters during the training exercises. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.