Bowling Green Fire Department trains inside Bemis Lawrence Hall

The Bowling Green Fire Department held training inside a residence hall at Western Kentucky University.

Tuesday morning firefighters practiced high rise drills inside Bemis Lawrence Hall, which will soon be torn down.

The training allowed firefighters to practice charging a hose line in the stairwell and advancing into a room where the fire would be.

"There's a lot of manpower that goes into an operation like this, a lot of moving parts, everybody has to do their fair share," said Bowling Green Firefighter, Chris Stafford.

The residence hall challenged firefighters to navigate stairwells and doorframes with their equipment.

"We don't get to do high rise training all that much so when we acquired a structure like this I like it, I love being able to put, you know, the classroom stuff or the training stuff to real-life application," said Stafford.

The training began Monday and runs at various times through Wednesday to allow firefighters on different shifts to practice.

"With this dormitory we have several doors on each floor and there's nine stories so there's ample opportunity for people to come in and crews can work with their hand tools on opening doors, some of these doors are very hard to open," said Brian Chambers, assistant chief with the Bowling Green Fire Department.

Tuesday's training allowed the firefighters to brush up on skills they need and talk about what they could improve.

"The discussion is what is key because it gets people thinking and the more we get to thinking the more we start discovering," said Chambers.

Officials said these skills help make firefighters ready for any scene they are called to.

"It's really been beneficial we don't have very many opportunities like this and so when we have these opportunities we can't thank WKU enough, you know, for letting us come up here and train like this," said Chambers.