SNOQUALMIE – The Valley will probably never know the disaster wrought by propane bombs or other such terrorist designs, but it’s nice to know Michael Bailey is around, just in case.

The Snoqualmie Fire Department lieutenant just got back from terrorism-related training in Nevada, where he learned flammable liquid fire fighting techniques.

Bailey traveled to Carlin, Nev. from Nov. 14-19 to attend the free training conference sponsored by the Fire Science Academy of the University of Nevada. The United States Department of Energy supplied a $2.5 million grant to the University of Nevada to run the program, which trained 700 rural and urban firefighters from around the country in industrial fire fighting skills.

Half of the class was spent training fire fighters to put out fires on props including gas spills, fuel fires, tanker trucks and leaking pipelines. The rest of the time firefighters talked about how those types of fires might relate to terrorism. University of Nevada professors taught classes such as the social psychology of terrorists, patterns of contemporary terrorism, and how to recognize bombs and other terrorist tools.

“The fire academy is set up for industrial fire fighting but they always related it back to terrorism, soft targets, and how someone could blow up tank farms and things like that,” Bailey said.

Bailey said though he’s not worried about terrorism in the Valley, it was good to learn the right way to deal with the sorts of crises rural fire departments don’t see everyday.

“The most challenging part was training on flammable liquid props,” Bailey said. “It was nice to get out there and put out flaming liquid fires because it’s not something regular municipal fire departments would do.”

The Academy trained 60 firefighters in each 32-hour class. Bailey said he was the lone firefighter from Washington State and most participants were from the East Coast.

“It was nice to talk to different departments across the country. We got to see how other departments respond to different situations,” Bailey said.

Many firefighters present were from departments that had big tank farms in their municipalities. Bailey said he enjoyed talking with them about how they deal with those possible hazards.

“We don’t have gasoline farms here, but we do have tanker trucks going by on the freeway,” Bailey said.

Bailey said it’s impossible to put out a flammable liquid fire with water. The only way to stop it is to shut off the fuel source. Water is just used to push the fire out of the way so you can get close enough to the valves.

Bailey said the fire fighters had to reach into many difficult types of fires with their hose lines. Some fires included leaky propane tanks, leaky rail cars, fuel pipes with raw fuel leaking out and leaky gas trucks.

“I feel like I gained a lot of experience in regards to flammable liquid fire and how to put them out,” said Bailey, noting there isn’t much chance he’ll ever have to fight such a fire in the Valley.

“We do have the falls, though, there’s a lot of people there,” he said. “If someone tried to use flammable liquid as a weapon I have more information now on how to deal with propane fires, what to worry about and what not to worry about.”

Bailey is now putting together a class for his fellow Snoqualmie firefighters using information from his experience in Nevada.

Staff Writer Melissa Kruse can be contacted at (425) 888-2311 or by e-mail at melissa.kruse@valleyrecord.com