LYNN – As dust floats all around them, four firefighters take axes to the walls and ceiling, searching inside for char marks that aren’t there from a fire that doesn’t exist.But when there is, these guys will be prepared.”It’s really invaluable training,” said District Chief Stephen Archer. “There’s nothing more real than this.”Eight Lynn firefighters and their supervisors met at a vacant, 100-year-old Millard Avenue home Wednesday afternoon to allow some of the newest recruits to train in conditions that are second only to the real thing.View a photo gallery”We’re not getting fires like we used to, so we need more properties like this to do more realistic training,” Capt. Michael McBride said Wednesday. “Other than that, we have nowhere to train – just a training room and it’s not hands on.”The department had been using the home, which is scheduled to be demolished today, for over a month, since its owner, Brookside Liquors owner Tom McGovern, essentially donated the property for training use, free of charge, until demolition, McBride said.In one drill, the men use a smoke machine to simulate a real fire, and often place a dummy “victim” somewhere inside the home. The firefighters are then sent into the house in full protective gear to find the dummy and “rescue” it.”We make pretend it’s a firefighter down and smoke the building up, and then the guys go in and grab the victim, and we make pretend there’s a fire in another room.”Other use of the house includes smashing through walls to simulate finding how far the fire has extended, and sawing holes in the ceiling to practice proper ventilation procedure.Training is especially important to the department now due to an influx of less-experienced firefighters, combined with a decrease in fires in the city of late. McBride said the department generally only comes across such an opportunity once every four or five years, but he’d like to see the “young department” get more experience.”We’re trying to make better awareness that people can call us when they’re going to tear down a house,” said McBride. “If people are destroying the buildings or demolishing, we have a really young department and we need the training and experience.”McBride said the Millard Avenue house has been used for training eight to 10 times in the last month, but each property has a limit.”Once we cut holes in the roof, the building’s kind of destroyed and it’s dangerous to walk around,” he said. “Now that we know it’s coming down tomorrow, we can do anything,” McBride said.Archer said he’d like to work with City Hall and Inspectional Services to come up with a system in which anyone scheduling to demolish a building, public or private, could be notified of the department’s need. Inspectional Services Director Mike Donovan said his department is “more than happy” to put the department in touch with the property owner when possible.”Sometimes we don’t get notice until a week before they want to do it,” Donovan said. “The owner may come in and pull the permits within two to three weeks so there’s not always a lot of lead time. But we’re happy to cooperate”McGovern, who has allowed the use of two of his properties, said there’s no liability for the owners once they sign a release form, and encouraged others who have scheduled demolitions to let the department know.”I’m just trying to get these guys seasoned in case we’ve got a situation,” he said.Taylor Provost can be reached at [email protected].