Indian River State College Public Safety Complex Expansion for Emergency Response Training

Indian River State College (IRSC) will utilize funds to expand its Public Safety Training Complex to enhance the College’s ability to further train firefighters, emergency medical, law enforcement and other first-responders to respond to the growing number of hurricanes, floods, wildfires, and other natural disasters.  The expansion will also allow for training first-responders to address man-made disasters such as urban civil disturbances.

This expansion will allow the College to train first-responders in a multi-threat/multi-risk environment which will build their capabilities for real-world response in both indoor and outdoor settings with movable, life-sized training props in confined spaces and in urban city street settings for conducting industrial, workplace, and school emergency response, incident command, and hazardous material scenarios.  This expansion will make IRSC's public safety training complex the only facility in Southeast Florida capable of training law enforcement, fire safety, and EMS at the same time to better coordinate their ability to choreograph efforts when all are required to respond to the same emergency.  Currently, the only other comprehensive facility with this training capacity is located at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX.

The state of Florida has already made significant investments in IRSC’s 14-building, 131,000 sq ft, Public Safety Campus located on 52 acres in Ft. Pierce, FL.  This project will allow IRSC to further enhance its facilities making it a regional training center for municipal law enforcement officers, firefighters and emergency personnel from throughout the southeastern United States and the east coast who require specialized training.  This project will help IRSC to fill a gap in the training currently available to municipal first-responders and emergency personnel in the south.