An investigation is underway by the Washington State Patrol to determine the source of a serious fire mistake that took place at its fire training academy in North Bend.
On October 25, firefighters participated in a routine training exercise in which a fire was intentionally started.
They then attempted to quell the fire, but made one large mistake: they pumped jet fuel directly onto the fire instead of water, thus causing a fireball to erupt instantaneously.
Bob Calkins of the State Patrol, the organization currently investigating the incident, told K5 that the academy’s oil/water separator- which recycles the water used for fire training exercises- malfunctioned and did not correctly filter the jet fuel used for the exercise from the reclaimed water. The filtering device is from the 1990s and investigators are looking into whether or not academy employees operated it correctly.
Thankfully, only two firefighters suffered minor burns.