Ex-hospital serves as training area

The old building that once was South Central Kansas Medical Center — and Arkansas City Memorial Hospital before that — stands at a crossroads.

Efforts to find a developer to renovate at least part of the structure have fallen through.

The City of Arkansas City was notified last week that one developer was unable to secure the needed funding to turn part of the building into low-income apartments.

Now demolition seems like the only remaining solution. But in the meantime, there’s some life in this old edifice yet.

Fire training

This week, the old hospital served as a temporary training ground for the Arkansas City Fire-EMS Department, as well as visiting fire instructors and students from Belle Plaine, Hutchinson, Oklahoma City and Wichita.

After a lecture Wednesday morning at the fire-EMS department, the real fun began.

Life fire training was conducted all day Thursday under the direction of two world-renowned instructors — Lt. Bob Pressler, retired from the Fire Department of New York, and Chief Mike Lombardo, a commissioner of the Buffalo (N.Y.) Fire Department.

Pressler is a 30-year veteran of the fire service who holds an associate’s degree in fire protection engineering from Oklahoma State University.

He was the Hands-On Coordinator for the Fire Department Instructors Conference for at least 10 years. He is a past member of the editorial advisory boards of both Fire Chief and Fire Engineering magazines.

Lombardo is a 34-year veteran of the fire service.

He is a New York State fire instructor, and was a member of the development team for New York state firefighter survival and rapid intervention programs.

Lombardo has been an editorial advisor for Fire Engineering magazine, a member of the advisory board for FDIC and lead instructor for FDIC live fire training.

He is an instructor in fire tactics, live fire attack, firefighter survival, and command throughout the U.S.

“I believe that this is a first ever in the U.S. to have two top quality instructors in a city 50,000 or less in population,” Fire-EMS Chief Bobby Wolfe said in an email.

The building served as a sort of a “playground” for firefighters, who practiced search procedures, confined space training, structural collapse training, high-angle rappelling, hose stretches, standpipe utilization, forced entry, ladder training and more.

“There’s just numerous different scenarios that we can put together using that hospital for training,” Wolfe said.

And, of course, they can set fires in a controlled manner without damaging the integrity of the building because it’s mostly made of concrete.

The visiting instructors “said this probably was one of the best venues (they’d seen),” Wolfe said, “and we could really set up a very good training school for the state.”

Future plans

In addition to training purposes, the building also could be used for destructive testing by such entities as the National Institute of Standards and Technology or Underwriters Laboratories. Both Lombardo and Pressler have ties to NIST.

City officials are hopeful that option could pan out, allowing them to make maximum use of the building before it’s torn down. Bids for demolition are being gathered.

Once it’s gone, at least one developer has expressed interest in possibly building apartments in the vacated space.

In the meantime, conditions are deteriorating daily due to high humidity from lack of air conditioning and roof leaks.

“We toured it after our last big rain storm, a month or so ago,” Wolfe said.

“It was just raining inside that thing. I think we actually probably did less water damage than the rain did.”

But despite its flaws, he said, the structure is a “jewel.”

“A lot of people see it as an eyesore,” Wolfe said, “but we see it as a great thing, at least as long as we can have it.”

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