Soon, a training facility at the Richardsville Volunteer Fire Department Station 2 will be available for volunteer firefighters throughout Warren County and beyond.

The facility should catch the eyes of any motorist driving past the station on Mount Olivet-Girkin Road, standing more than 25 feet tall and made of shipping containers stacked on top of one another.

Pat Stewart, chairman of the Richardsville VFD board of directors, said firefighters have wanted the facility for some time.

“This has been in discussion probably about two years,” he said.

Throughout daylight hours Wednesday, CDK Construction used a crane to stack more than a dozen shipping containers, each 40 feet long and 9.5 feet tall, on top of one another in the shape of two adjacent towers.

Jason Smith with CKD Construction, who served as the project’s foreman, said the containers on the ground level were welded to metal braces attached to the foundation outside the station and will later be welded to the containers on top of them.

Inside, CDK will cut holes in the walls of the containers intended to allow the department’s volunteers to simulate a fire in a building.

“It’s going to be like an apartment complex,” he said. “That’s what it’s made to simulate.”

In the spring, Smith said he expects the company to paint the facility as well.

Though there were no apartment buildings in the Richardsville fire district a few years ago, several have been built in recent years, which led the firefighters to want a facility where they could practice firefighting operations in a structure that simulated an apartment complex, Stewart said.

Currently, the volunteers must conduct drills at other sites, mainly the training center at Bowling Green Fire Department Station 5, making a facility on the Richardsville VFD Station 2 property a long-sought convenience.

Stewart said the facility still needs to have stairs and a platform connecting the two towers to be installed, and he expects the facility to be complete in the spring.

“This just elevates our training opportunities we have here,” he said. “I want to make sure our volunteers have the best training opportunities possible.”

Stewart said he hopes other volunteer fire departments take advantage of the training facility when it’s finished.

“While this is in the Richardsville fire district, we want this to be available to all fire departments in the county,” he said, adding that VFDs in other counties would be welcome to train there as well.

Construction of the facility is expected to cost $400,000 and is being financed with money borrowed from Franklin Bank & Trust, Stewart said.

Shipping containers were chosen as the building material because they were cheaper than many other more traditional options, he said.

Larry Sprouse of Sprouse Container Leasing, who sold the department the containers used to construct the training facility, said shipping containers have caught on as a building material, partly because of the cost, in the last few years, adding that he’s seen houses, hunting cabins and even mansions built from shipping containers.

“We’re seeing all kinds of uses,” he said. “There’s a lot of demand for them now.”