Dallas NC Gaston County Public Safety Training Center

Over the course of the last two decades, Gaston College has maintained a continuous relationship with SCNA in first designing, and then continuously updating and improving, their 30-acre training center (RESTC) located on the southern corner of their campus.

This relationship has yielded success for the RESTC under both the previous Director, Phil Welch (now serving as Fire Chief for the City of Gastonia, NC), and the current Director, Josh Crisp.  One of the largest facilities of its kind in the U.S., the RESTC provides basic, continuing and advanced training to all areas of emergency services – fire, rescue, law enforcement and EMS.

Owing to its well-liked design and comprehensive on-site resources, the Center serves as the host for the bi-annual North Carolina Firefighter Survival School, and occasionally hosts military training exercises as well (from neighboring bases).  Features include an NFPA-1402 compliant, multi-story Burn Building with 14 Interior Burn Areas.

The classroom building was designed to accommodate all administrative and indoor training activities for the Fire program, EMS program and Criminal Justice Academy.  It includes 13 offices, 9 labs/classrooms, physical training, conference rooms, workrooms, shower/locker rooms, and other support spaces.  Site also contains a covered pavilion for training activities associated with the adjacent burn buildings and other “dirty” training props.  While matching the adjacent campus aesthetics, the building was designed as a pre-engineered structure to help achieve a limited project budget.