Firmenich Serves As Backdrop for Safety Harbor Firefighter Training

A heavy scent of citrus oil hung in the air as Safety Harbor and Pinellas firefighters pointed their hoses at a large chemical tank.

On this particular day, if an imaginary fire next to the tank isn't put out with foam, it could cause the tank to heat up and explode. 

"It's very realistic to say that could happen not only here, but somewhere else in the future," Erich Thiemann, Dunedin's fire division chief of training, said during a recent joint training exercise at the Firmenich Citrus Center in Safety Harbor. "So it's a great environment for us to be in terms of training."

All the proof Thiemann needs to justify training for such an emergency is in recent local and national headlines: the boat fire with leaking fuel in the Tarpon Springs Sponge Docks and a deadly fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas.

He was one of several fire chiefs and training officials from six north county departments who organized three weeks of training on the complex for firefighters in Dunedin, Safety Harbor, Palm Harbor, East Lake, Tarpon Springs, and Oldsmar.

Owners of the Firmenich Citrus Center, who are in the process of closing its operations in Safety Harbor, allowed use of the complex to the firefighters for training purposes.

The citrus oil manufacturing plant has long operated on the 36-acre industrial complex on the northeast corner of McMullen Booth Road and State Road 590 in Safety Harbor.

The city's plans to develop the Firmenich Center into a residential complex have come under recent scrutiny from Pinellas County officials, who want to hold it as an industrial site for possibly corporate job recruitment opportunities.

Still, it's not every day that firefighters get to train on an active industrial site. 

It's such a unique experience that Tom Dundon, Safety Harbor's deputy fire chief, attended one recent drill during his off-time just to take pictures for the firefighters.

Running drills on a working, industrial site provides the north county firefighters with a "candy store" of realistic scenarios, said Dundon. 

He sees a training opportunity in every nook and already has plans for more, so long as the property owners consent.

Dundon explained how creating unique, imaginary training scenarios is critical for effective emergency preparedness.

"We do have times where things don't go right," he said. "Either because a mistake was made or an equipment issue, but what we really like to watch for, as trainers, is how is our firefighters are reacting to that problem, how to they overcome it?"

"We don't like when things go badly," Dundon said. "But we want them to go badly on the training ground so we can correct our operations and hopefully prevent that in a real fire, when the threat is real."

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