"Captain, there is a fire in the laundry room," the chief engineer said via VHF radio. "But there is still a bit of smoke under the door, so I will open the door and hit it with a fire extinguisher one last time before we set the fire alarm on duty."

"Okay, captain, but be sure to put the carbon dioxide fire extinguisher on the deck so that it doesn't scare you," the captain replied, glad that his well-trained crew responded so quickly.

The engineer has just introduced oxygen into an enclosed space that already has fuel and heat. The backfire quickly reignited, causing burns to the engineers and sailors who worked with him. There is now a fire and people falling to the ground.

This is not a real fire, but a virtual simulation in the new, Coast Guard-approved advanced fire protection course at Delgado Community College in New Orleans. It is called XVR and is currently the only computer-based advanced firefighting course approved by the country's coast guard.

The focus is on command and control of fires, chemical spills, oil spills and other accidents on ships and industrial facilities.

XVR’s chief lecturer Al Faciane explained that he believes that “towing fire hoses and fire extinguishing bottles is tactical and basic fire fighting. Advanced fire fighting is more strategic in concept and focuses on command and control of fire and rescue teams. ."

As the New Orleans district fire chief with 29 years of fire department experience, Faciane has been a lecturer at Delgado for 18 years. 

In 2012, he attended an incident management course at the National Fire Academy of Maryland, and believed that the computer training used at the time was “impressive. The National Fire Academy is a hotbed for meeting firefighters with innovative ideas.”

He brought the idea of ​​cooperating with the Dutch XVR computer company to Delgado. Initially, the procedure was designed for petrochemical plants, offshore production platforms, and port shore accidents.

However, although the program was not designed for ships, Faciane collaborated with Alan “Rosie” Rosiere, a retired New Orleans fire chief who has 37 years of Delgado instructor experience and developed the , High-pressure valves, scene facilities and galleys in the laundry room to extinguish ship fires. The program can also simulate oil spills and helicopter crashes on offshore platforms.

A few years ago, when Delgado was designing a new marine and industrial training building, senior director Rick Schwab asked the instructors what they wanted. Looking forward to implementing XVR-type computer training, Faciane can provide a room for lecturers to manage XVR training computers, and a separate room with workstations for students. 

Each of the five students attending the meeting, as a captain, engineer, sailor or tanker, can only see his specific area on the computer screen of his workstation, and wear headphones to isolate him from other students. The headset provides analog radio communication. The instructor saw all the scenes.

According to the requirements of the station bill, the captain can only see the windows of the wheelhouse on the bridge, unless the fire is out of control, at which time he sees smoke and catches fire on his screen. When the crew reported the fire and the progress, the captain received the call via VHF radio.

The engineer saw a fire in the engine room. Sailors and tankers can only see their area. If the training scene goes well, the fire will decrease until it goes out. But if you ignore the necessary steps, things will start to get worse. The fire spread quickly, and the smoke began to obscure the view on the computer screen, just as the smoke in a real fire restricts visibility. 

This is a dynamic scene. When the participant responds, check the list of steps to be taken as directed by NAVIC. Other students in the larger classroom can view all screens remotely. After each revolution, a "hot wash" review of the behavior of the participants will be conducted. The situation may change as the instructor dials out a water pump failure or the fire hose is kinked or cut.

The topics on the list include sounding the alarm, notifying the bridge, calling the crew, checking whether the pump is filled with water, turning off the ventilation and closing the damper, calling the office, the coast guard and the fire department at the port. If you are also dealing with stability issues in the port, a lot of water is needed. ,even more.

If the captain forgets to sound the general alarm and summon the crew, assistant engineer Nicholas Sabane will disappear.

If the fire is out of control and the engineer wants to emit carbon dioxide, does the captain insist that all crew members leave the engine compartment before pressing the button? If not, the engineer Sabane will be trapped in the cabin, and there is now an element of personnel falling to the ground.

If the crew forgets to close the damper, carbon dioxide will escape and the fire will expand. The fire has now escalated into an abandoned ship accident.

Using Google Earth and a video-equipped drone, Faciane was able to recreate the scene a few days before the start of the training course. When the course starts, participants will be able to recognize it on their training station screen, including physical objects and structures, adding to the sense of realism.

In a storage tank facility near the dock, the company used XVR training after installing a new ammonia tank. The company is concerned that a nearby elementary school may need to be evacuated if there is a large amount of uncontrolled ammonia release. 

When Faciane coached factory employees through training programs, he changed the amount of gas leakage, wind direction, and wind speed. Together, they quickly realized that the factory's fire and emergency equipment was stored in a shed too close to the storage tanks and could not be accessed in an actual accident.

"It is difficult to persuade people to give up doing what they have been doing," Faciane said of initially refusing to participate in computer-based firefighting courses. In order to show the realism to the company, he recreated the Deepwater Horizon Blowout as a sales tool, even though he said he had never used this kind of scene in class. 

The traditional firefighting training is to "put wet things on red things". Delgado is equipped with a fire field with many fire props, which can simulate fires in many places such as high-pressure valves, oil pits, ship engineering spaces and dormitories. Junior fire students learn how to use chemical fire extinguishers or water pipes to extinguish fires safely.

"But if we combine basic fire drills with advanced fire fighting, we will reduce new employees and experienced sailors," Faciane explained. 

"New employees need fire extinguisher and hose towing experience," he said. "It's basic. But after an experienced sailor has done it many times, he gets very little from that kind of training. Experienced sailors need to learn how to command and control accidents, and XVR provides them with training. "

Photo caption: Al Faciane launched an advanced firefighting scene for the extreme virtual reality training at Delgado Community College. Different screens show the views that training participants see as they react to the incident as captain, engineer, sailor, or tanker. (Photo taken by Captain Richard Eberhardt)

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