Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (July 12/02) - A trio of aging fuel tanks next to Mildred Hall school have a new home.

Heating fuel was discovered leaking from one of the tanks last year, and the walls surrounding them were beginning to buckle due to frost heave.

Acting Yellowknife Airport fire chief Steve Loutitt peers out from within a fuel tank already modified for training exercises at the airport's fire crew training grounds. The tank was taken Tuesday night from Mildred Hall school. - Mike W. Bryant/NNSL photo

The tanks were supposed to be removed last fall, but Yellowknife Education No.1 trustees nixed the plan after discovering that the cost of removing them had been under budgeted by $65,000.

Yellowknife No.1's director of facility maintenance, David Johnson, said it became imperative to move the tanks quickly because they were a growing hazard.

"The tanks were 30 years old and they had to be removed," said Johnson. "A lot of it was environmental as well as safety.

"We had movement in the building last year when the walls started caving in. We had about another four to six inches this year when the frost came out, so we had to do something right away."

Last Tuesday, the tanks were finally removed, and were given to the Yellowknife Airport's emergency fire crew for training exercises.

Airport manager Michel Lafrance said the tanks will be a welcome addition to the airport's existing training equipment.

A horizontal tank, 40 feet in length, will be used to simulate an airplane fuselage in which fire crews will practise rescue attempts amid burning pallets and dummies representing the passengers.

One vertical tank will become the "smokehouse," for training with respirators, while another identical tank will be used to store equipment at the training site, which is located at the eastern edge of the airport.

"The horizontal tank will be used as a mock-up of an aircraft," said Lafrance. "They are going to practice entering and exiting the tank. Those guys like to play in the fire."

"It looks a lot like the size of a 737," added acting airport fire chief Steve Loutitt, referring to the horizontal tank. "Maybe a little bigger."

With the tanks out of the way, Yellowknife No.1 trustee Terry Brookes said the district can now figure out what do with the now emptied site.

Renovations at Mildred Hall are slated to begin next year.

"It opens up some options of how that might play in the whole scheme of things, and I know the architects are working on some drawings there," said Brookes. "What it will be I don't know at this point."