MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - As a part of the new Central Fire Station, Meridian Township will soon be home to new firefighter training facilities.

One of the rooms in the new fire station will be dedicated to training of firefighters. This training room will be equipped for lectures and presentations, as well as being useful for hands-on training activities.

"We do a lot of hands-on training, so we'll be able to spread out and put our training mannequins and different things there," said Bill Priese, Chief of Training and EMS Operations for the Meridian Township Fire Department.

In addition to this new training room, the Central Fire Station will also have a training prop house. This prop house will be used to allow firefighters to practice escapes out of windows and off of roofs and being able to cut holes on the roof, among other things. The prop house is also portable, giving the Fire Department the freedom to set it up both inside and outside depending on the weather conditions.

"One of the things that we want to use it for is to create muscle memory. These procedures are used during emergency situations, when all hell's breaking loose. And these decisions that you're making are going to be life-and-death decisions, and so at times you have to be able to just do it," said Meridian Township Fire Department Battalion Chief Kenneth Phinney.

The Meridian Fire Department will also soon be getting access to a house that Meridian Township owns on Towner Road in Haslett for training purposes. This house will eventually be turned into part of the Towner Road Park, but in the meantime, it is a fantastic opportunity for the Meridian Fire Department to train in real locations.

"The nice thing with that is we don't always get real houses to work in, and so we're going to utilize it as much as we can," said Priese.

The Towner Road house will be useful for search and rescue drills and firefighter rescue drills for rescuing other firefighters if they go down, among others.