Congressman visits Rock Falls Fire Department, talks funding for training facility

ROCK FALLS – The U.S. House of Representatives is set to consider helping fund a training center for the Rock Falls and Sterling fire departments to the tune of $825,000 when it returns to session next month.

“As a trusted neighbor in Congress, my responsibility is to prepare Rock Falls for what’s ahead,” U.S. Rep. Eric Sorensen, D-Rockford, said during a Friday, Aug. 9, visit to Rock Falls. “Part of that means making sure that we have the right tools, the proper training to do our jobs and be ready to face any challenge in front of us. When I learned that the Rock Falls Fire Department needed a new training tower, I worked with the department and with other local elected officials to put forth a $1.5 million request with Congress to get that done.”

Sorensen requested the funding as part of the fiscal 2025 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act.

On July 10, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee voted 29-26 to approve the bill. Among its Community Project Funding appropriations was $825,000 for the Rock Falls Fire Department to build a burn tower, where firefighters from around the area can train in live-fire conditions.

The appropriations bill still must go through votes in the U.S. House and U.S. Senate and then be signed into law before funds are distributed.

Sorensen said he plans to try to have the remaining $675,000 of his request approved next year.

“The training tower will not only be used by the Rock Falls Fire Department but will also be used by neighboring departments across the entire region so they can be prepared and ready for anything,” Sorensen said.

The training facility will be located on 5 acres on Beltway Drive in Rock Falls’ industrial park. The city of Rock Falls owns the vacant land and has allocated it for the facility.

It will be built in phases, with the burn tower being the first priority, Rock Falls Deputy Fire Chief Kyle Sommers said.

Sommers co-chairs the Garrett Ramos Training Facility Cooperative alongside Sterling Fire Department Capt. Clark Liedberg.

A needs assessment for the Sterling and Rock Falls fire departments found that they “lacked some facilities to conduct realistic scenario-based training and solutions at our local level,” Sommers said during the Oct. 17, 2023, Rock Falls City Council meeting. “That resulted in a gap between our current training system and our desired outcome.”

The assessment was done in the wake of the line-of-duty death of Lt. Garrett Ramos of the Sterling Fire Department.

The 38-year-old died Dec. 4, 2021, after falling through the floor of a burning home in rural Rock Falls. About 30 minutes after two of Ramos’ mayday calls went unanswered, he was found unresponsive in a basement that fire command hadn’t known existed.

Ramos was the first Sterling firefighter to die in the line of duty. He posthumously was promoted to captain.

Neither the Sterling nor Rock Falls fire departments have an easily accessible facility in which to conduct realistic scenarios, Sommers said. Such training is an immediate need identified by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and National Fire Protection Association guidelines, he said.

In April 2022, OSHA released its initial incident report, dated March 8, 2022, outlining multiple “willful” errors made during the fire. The final report was released in December 2022 and, as a result, the cities of Sterling and Rock Falls paid a combined $36,000 in fines for “lapses” in each department’s policies and procedures.

Those lapses contributed to Ramos’ death from “asphyxia caused by inhalation of products of combustion due to a structure fire,” according to the report.

Although the direct cause of Ramos’ death was “exposure to respiratory hazards,” the indirect causes included a failure “to identify the presence or absence of a basement” and a failure to ensure that firefighters entering the home “were operating on the designated [radio] frequency,” among other things, OSHA said.

Ramos was a longtime proponent of building a training facility, and he had done some work on it before his death, Sommers said.

“This facility will carry on [Ramos’] legacy, and his ideas for modern training and doing it the right way and the best way,” Sterling Deputy Fire Chief David Northcutt said. “[The federal funding] is going to give us an opportunity to continue in his honor.”