Emergency training haven under construction

Carlsbad will soon host a top quality, ongoing training facility expected to cost $16 million.

The Joint First Responders Public Safety Training Center is quite a mouthful for what is currently just a construction site outside the Carlsbad police and fire departments.

Slated to open next year, the training center would service police officers, firefighters and paramedics alike with a combination of pistol and rifle ranges, mock residential and business complexes, as well as the classroom environment all dedicated to the continued training of men and women active in the field.

Captain Bill Rowland said the estimated cost for the three-building campus of training facilities is a rough bid of $16 million.

“The construction should be finished around the end of this year, and opening during the first business quarter of 2012, if not sooner,” Rowland said.

Rowland claimed the buildings will recreate full residential and business environments, each scenario portraying the “sense of realism.”

There will be everything from a five-story tower to collapsing floors landing into the underground maze of pipes simulating exactly what these first respondents may encounter on the job.

Although the center is being built directly in front of the Carlsbad facilities, Capt. Rowland expects the building to draw the staffs of departments throughout San Diego County and the surrounding areas.