Orange Beach, Ala. – (OBA) – Orange Beach is looking to spend about $135,000 to do some rehab and refurbishing of the fire department’s training tower behind Fire Station No. 1 at the city hall complex.

“The tower has two areas that we can burn in and actually practice fires,” Assistant Chief Kevin Lanford said. “In those areas they have panels in the walls that meet the requirements so we can have fires in those areas. They wear out and get thinner and the fire and the water kind of takes its toll on it. Just kind of a combination of doing some general maintenance and upkeep.”

Lanford said the tower has been in almost constant use since being built in the mid-2000s for a variety of programs and ongoing recertifications.

“The tower was originally built in 2008,” Lanford said. “Since then, we’ve held numerous classes, recruit schools, ongoing training, all kinds of stuff. Over time it just wears down, things rust, things break. This is just a way to get a lot of the work done all at once.”

That doesn’t mean a few new and improved features won’t be included in the work.

“We’re adding a few small things,” Lanford said. “Some anchors for repelling, a couple of different anchors so that our rope team has options on what they have and a couple of updated features.”

The tower also gets heavy usage from those in the recruit school as well as the resident firefighter program.

“Any recruit school, out of the 10- to 12-week recruit school you’re probably going to be doing something in the tower 90 percent of the time,” Lanford said. “Even when you’re doing hazardous materials training and things like that, we can use it to simulate a commercial building, a residence and things like that. We use the tower frequently.”

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Materials needed to complete the job, like just about any project since COVID began, are hard to find and prices have gone up, too.

“The challenge that we face is obviously getting the parts from the people we had the tower built by and just getting the materials in,” Lanford said. “That’s just impacted everybody. The time to get them delivered and the cost has just gone up in the last few years.”

Reed Construction was awarded the contract at the June 7 council meeting and was the only bidder on the project.