by Lance Davis

Though its population is small, Gonzales, La., is a hub for industry, and thousands of people work just on the outskirts of this city of 8,500.

To make sure its first responders stay on top of the latest training, last year the city opened a 6,000-square-foot training center, the Gonzales Public Safety Center.

Using the latest technology, the multi-use classroom can accommodate up to 100 people and is equipped with multi-media technology, wireless access to the Internet and the city?s intranet and a rope rescue-training course. The $800,000 complex was paid for using revenue from a one-half cent sales tax dedicated to public safety.

?This center is very important to us because it allows us to locally train our police and firefighters, and their counterparts in the private sector,? said Gonzales Police Chief Bill Landry.

Before construction began on the center in 2003, police and fire officials researched the training needs of their departments as well as the needs of private emergency response teams operated by industrial facilities in the area.

The research also included visiting other successful training sites such as the National Fire Academy, Louisiana State University Fire and Emergency Training Center and the Mississippi Fire Academy.

One key advantage of owning the facility is that Gonzales firefighters and police officers do not have to travel to obtain training and new skills. In the past, said Fire Chief Butch Browning, this prohibited most training.

?Because we?re all training in the same place now, our people are able to put names with faces of their counterparts in the chemical industry, so that during an actual emergency, our people will know their contacts at the different industries,? said Brown.

For Brown and Landry, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, show that new types of training were needed in case of a terrorist attack in their area.

For Brown, watching firefighters enter collapsed buildings, craters and trenches to rescue survivors was a skill his department needed to learn. For that, the Public Safety Center was equipped with hooks in the walls and ceilings so that his men could train for technically complicated rescues.

?Firefighters have to be more diverse in their training, and Sept. 11 has made that more evident,? said Brown. ?We also see the need for this type of training because of the amount of multi-story construction projects underway in Gonzales, and because of radio towers, water towers and other multi-story buildings that regularly undergo maintenance.?

In the police department, Landry said the attacks of 2001 showed the need for tactical response teams. The center allows his force a place to train in tactical response and also the ability to train with the National Guard Civil Support Teams.

?We make sure that when we do the training, that we pay attention to how it could be used in our daily roles as police officers, not only as it applies to homeland security,? said Landry.

In an executive summary of a report on the Public Safety Center, Brown wrote that the results of the training programs at the center had exceeded expectations.

?In the first month of operation we conducted over 1,200 hours of student education, including training for a local industrial fire brigade,? the summary stated.

The center has also allowed the city to establish a local training program for the fire and police departments that allows local fulfillment of certification requirements for fire insurance rating and police training standards.

It also brings unity to the fire and police personnel to cultivate a team that can better serve Gonzales citizens and it has established a site for city and private emergency response teams to train together at a lower cost.