Site of Deadly Fire to Be Used for Training, then Demolished

The Ingram Square Shopping Center, where one firefighter was killed and two others hurt fighting a fire last month, will be used for training purposes before being demolished, Fire Chief Charles Hood said today.

"They are walking through the gym, they will see several areas where different things happened in the fire," Hood said.  "They are going out to the back to see how those doors were forced, and they will also go through the computer store, which was also badly damaged by fire."

He says the idea is to educate firefighters about what happens in a very bad fire, and how they can avoid injury if they find themselves in a similar situation.

"There's also pictures of what it looked like the night of the fire, when we went in to make those recoveries, and show what it looked like," he said.

The death of Firefighter Scott Deem was the first on duty fatality of a San Antonio Firefighter in two decades, and Hood says this training can help insure that no other firefighters die battling a fire for decades to come.

"We are going to take this opportunity to learn, to capture any available information," he said.Hood said local and national officials are still uncertain what caused the deadly fire on the evening of May 18th, and also are still investigating what specifically caused the death of Deem.

He says Brad Phipps, a firefighter who was criticlally burned in the fire, is recovering at San Antonio Military Medical Center, where the breathing tube he had been using for the past three weeks has been removed.


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