Great Falls Fire Rescue Chief Jeremy Jones is working to build a coalition to get state funding for an all-hazards training area at the city’s existing training center on 9th Street South.

He’s presenting to the Legislature’s Local Government Interim Committee in September in the hopes of getting some of the state’s surplus funds for a training facility that would serve local agencies, as well as be available to first responder agencies statewide.

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Locally, Jones is working to partner with the Great Falls Police Department, Cascade County Sheriff’s Office, rural fire departments, Montana Highway Patrol and possibly Calumet.

The facility would include specialty props to help responders train for a wider range of hazards, and potentially a live-round shoot house for law enforcement and a proper burn building for fire agencies.

Having the facility at the existing GFFR training site would be ideal, Jones said, since that would allow firefighters on shift to be able to train and still run calls.

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It’s expensive, he said, to bring people in off-shift for training, or sending them out of state for specialty training.

There’s no way the city, or other municipalities, can afford to build a new facility of the type on their own, given their limited resources and increasing needs.

If approved, they’d create a consortium and the facility would be membership based so agencies would share in the maintenance costs of the facility, “so we don’t get back in this position again.”

The training tower at the existing facility is currently condemned, Jones said. They also only have a shipping container to use for live burn training.

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“We don’t have the facilities we need to properly train,” for structure fires, but also other emergencies that the respond to, Jones said.

The City Commission approved $150,000 in the budget for repairs, but officials found out this week they have to bring the facility up to current OSHA standards, rather than be grandfathered under the older standards as they’d hoped.

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That will likely increase their costs, Jones said, and they’re waiting on an updated estimate from a structural engineer.

“Is it fixable, yes, but how much it will cost, we don’t know,” he said.

The condemned tower has impacted GFFR’s ability to train for aerial tasks, technical rescues and high rise operations. Jones said they’ve been doing most of that in the parking garage stairwell towers lately.