CITY MAY GET FIRE TRAINING FACILITY; NEW GUN RANGE IS ALSO PLANNED

Plans are in the works for facilities to help Cape Girardeau's police and fire departments hone their public safety skills.

The city is acquiring land to build a training site for the Cape Girardeau Fire Department, and work should start this summer on a new firing range for the Cape Girardeau Police Department.

Fire Chief Dan White said his department needs a site where firefighters can learn to battle working fires.

"There is no place near us where we can routinely send our firefighters to do this kind of training," White said.

In the past, the fire department has searched out old, abandoned houses and burned them for training exercises, he said.

"That's still an alternative but only if the house sits way off by itself," White said.

Cape Girardeau is growing, and the houses are closer together, he said. The danger of a training fire spreading to other structures or the burning house collapsing on firefighters is too great, he said.

"Eventually we have to back off and just let the thing burn, and when you do that too many things can go wrong," he said.

White wants to set up a training site with a two-story burn building and a four-story training tower.

The burn building would have to be able to withstand repeated fires and be structurally sound enough that it would be safe to send firefighters inside, he said.

With no training facility in the region, the city has been lucky that the last several firefighters hired have had experience and training through other organizations before joining the Cape Girardeau Fire Department, White said.

"If we were to hire somebody who was really green, we would have a problem getting them the training they need before they go out to their first real fire, and we just don't have any place to do that," he said.

Not only do rookies need the training, but veteran firefighters need it to keep their skills sharp, said White.

"This is a conditioning thing. It gives people the opportunity to develop trust in their equipment over and over again and to practice the techniques they need," he said.

The fire department training facility is a $500,000 item in the city's capital improvements program, but the funding hasn't been appropriated for the project.

The police department is planning a 25-yard outdoor firing range in the Smelterville area. The targets will be set up in front of a dirt berm that will prevent stray bullets from traveling to nearby industries, said officer Bob McCoy, one of the project planners.

"If we did have an accident, the berm is going to be angled so that the bullet would be going out toward Marquette Island," McCoy said.

In addition, an overhead structure will be built over the range to help restrict stray bullets, he said.

Officers will qualify with 9-mm weapons on the firing range twice a year -- usually once in the spring and once in the fall, McCoy said. Rifles will not be used on the firing range. Up to eight officers will be able to use the range at a time.

Police had hoped to have the range operational by July, he said, but rainy weather and flooding have prevented work from getting started.

McCoy said plans now call for work to start as soon as possible this summer, with completion by September or October.

Eventually, police hope to be able to build an indoor firing range on the site as well, he said.

Officers now use a firing range on private property north of the city limits, he said.

The fire department site lies about a block south of La Cruz Street and is bordered by Pine Street on the south, South Sprigg on the west and Giboney and the Burlington Northern tracks on the east.

The police department range is bordered by La Cruz on the north, the Burlington Northern tracks on the west, Third Street on the east and Locust on the south. Some of the property was already city owned and some was acquired in the flood buyout program.