The only real way to learn to put out fires is to actually do it, says Rob Tieche, EMS director for

The only real way to learn to put out fires is to actually do it, says Rob Tieche, EMS director for the Canfield Fire Department. So as part of the department's required training, 10 firefighters spent several hours Saturday extinguishing a fire inside an old cow barn on the Canfield Fairgrounds. "You can read about it, but there is nothing better than actually doing it," Tieche said. "When you are in a building, you have all the heat and smoke, and it's sometimes 1,000 degrees. It's good to get an idea of what it will actually be like." He said the part-time firefighters learned about attacking interior fires and watching how fires grow. "It's a controlled burn," Tieche said. "Plus you know what type of building, what the inside is like, you don't get that when you are just responding to a fire."