Brookhaven lab cancels wildfire fighting exercises

Due to the powerful storm Sandy, Brookhaven National Laboratory has canceled wildfire training exercises, which were scheduled to begin last Friday and continue through Nov. 2.

The New York Wildfire and Incident Management Academy's 15th annual training course at BNL was to include wildfire field exercises such as ignition operation demonstrations, delegation of wild portable pumps and water usage, lighting of prescribed fires, canine searches and chain-saw operations. The exercises were scheduled to run daily from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

For the second year, a group of 18 firefighters from Spain was scheduled to take part in the sessions and participate in classes such as incident management and chain-saw operations.

The Spanish firefighters were to join about 300 other students, instructors and personnel from fire departments across the United States and Canada.