Construction of the City of Clarksdale’s new fire department training facility is expected to be completed by the first week of April, said Fire Chief Rocky Nabors.
The training facility, located next to the fire station on Sasse Street, is being painted and will be dark gray.
“We’re in the paint stage on it,” Nabors said. “We’ve got the color on it. The railing will be trimmed safety yellow.”
Nabors said Clarksdale Public Utilities employees will be helping put rocks on the surface of the facility.
The facility will help train firefighters to extinguish residential and store fires. Other fire departments from surrounding communities will be able to use the facility.
Nabors has been with the fire department for 31 years.
“It feels great,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming. We’re trying to get this thing done. I’ve been here 31 years and we’ve been trying to get this thing done, even before then.
“We have something now we’ve been trying to get for years. We finally have a tool that lets us stay fresh on our craft and train, train and train. For years, we’ve been doing this job and there were no facilities to train. Now, we have one so we can always stay fresh.”
Nabors said the fire department has been training through improvisation, but that will change with the new facility.
“Sometimes we used vacant structures,” he said. “Sometimes we used the auditorium to do as much as we could do. A lot of it was on the job training.”
