1977 Dedication of the Fire Academy's first training tower

Academy Leaders

Bill Miles
Coordinator
1977- 2000

Kay Blackman
Deputy Director
1978-2005

Jeremy Donovan
Director
2000-2005

Richard "Rick" Stilp
Director
2005-Present

Jeanette Eddy
Asst. Director
TECO Campus

Orlando, Florida

In the fall of 1976, representatives from the City of Orlando, the individual fire districts of Orange County, and the Orange County Public Schools met to coordinate their needs, resources and expertise. Their goal: to provide the firefighters of Orange County and Central Florida with the best in training facilities and classes. Other meetings followed.

Realizing that no one agency could service that goal alone, a decision was made to form a consortium and call it the Orlando Orange Fire Training Academy (OOFTA). On June 17, 1977, OOFTA became a reality.

Orange County Public Schools volunteered to be the "home" of OOFTA, with its Post Secondary Adult Vocational Department continuing its support of the training of firefighters and fire officers.

The first location of OOFTA was the former wing commander's office building on the west side of the Orlando International Airport (OIA.) Classes began in August of 1977 with a sprinkler class and a Firefighter Minimum Standards class. The classes were held at what was then the Lake Barton Fire District (Station 66). The first order of business was to construct a training tower .

Academy Moves to Mid Florida Tech
Growth of the program, the need for more training facilities, and the growth of OIA contributed to the Board of Trustees' decision to move the Academy from the airport to the campus of Mid Florida Tech.

The year was 1983. By then, the former individual fire districts had become a division of Orange County and the City of Maitland had joined the Academy consortium. To reflect this, the name of the Academy was changed to the Central Florida Fire Academy at Orlando (CFFA).

The Board of Trustees paid for the development of a master plan, which is still being implemented today. Under this plan:

• Orange County Public Schools, as a partner in CFFA, devoted the south portion of the Mid Florida Tech campus to the training of firefighters.
• The Operating Engineers training program of Mid Florida Tech cleared the site for use as a regional training facility.
• Orange County Public Schools committed to building the first of two building projects - the training tower and roadways and hydrants.

The second construction project by OCPS was the building of a structure to house fire apparatus, general storage and the four interlocking SCBA stress mazes. The Board of Trustees, using their funds, constructed the LP gas training area, installed the security fence and completed the water control retention pond for use in training.

"Burn Building" & Portable
Training Tower Added
The Board of Trustees then undertook the largest construction project at the Training Area, the Live Fire Training Building, which came to be known as the "Burn Building." A combination of a state grant and funds developed by the Board of Trustees were used in 1989 to build a three-story, 10,000 square-foot structure, in which fires could be placed in any of six different "rooms".

The $1,100,000 result has provided facilities that reflect the buildings and businesses in Central Florida, and has contained thousands of fires over its 20-plus years of life.

A 38-foot high Portable Training Tower was purchased by the Board of Trustees for training to take place at fire stations. This was another example of the cooperation practiced by the partnership, which by then was called the Central Florida Emergency Services Institute.

At the Dawn of the New Millenia
From 2000-2005, the Academy experienced considerable change and growth:

• Our Live Fire Training Building was renovated and equipped to facilitate a variety of live fire scenarios using Liquid Propane as fuel. (photos)
• A new fire apparatus (photo) and several new training trailers (photos) were purchased
• new courses were added to the curriculum
• the office and most classrooms were moved to the second floor of the 1600 building (photo)
• and with the same spirit of cooperation that forged a partnership in 1977 and built today's Fire Academy, the member agencies signed an Interlocal Agreement, making the Fire Academy an independent governmental agency.

Since 2005...
In recent years, the Fire Academy has brought the EMT poriton of its Firefighter/EMT program over from Mid Florida Tech, expanded its Special Operations Program to include HazMat Technician and Truck Company Operations, concluded the articulation agreements with Valencia and Seminole Community Colleges that had been initiated by the previous administration, and established a second campus at the Technical Education Center of Osceola (TECO).

In addition, the Academy has recently established an Incident Command Simulation Center and acquired a Swede Flashover Simulator. As of this writing, the acquisition of two used and one new pumper apparatus is under way.

At the heart of all we do is our mission, which simply stated is:

"provide safe, high quality and innovative fire/rescue education and training"

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