08/07/2026
Where We Have Been — and Where We Are Going
Some buildings are made of concrete, steel, and wood.
Others are built from memories, lessons, sweat, smoke, and the people who passed through their doors.
For more than 40 years, the old Auburn burn building has quietly served Maine’s fire service. It is not large. It is not modern. By today’s standards, it is remarkably simple. But within those walls, thousands of Maine firefighters learned lessons that followed them back to their departments and, in many cases, throughout their entire careers.
For decades, the City of Auburn and the Auburn Fire Department have maintained an exemplary partnership with Maine’s statewide fire training system—from the days of Maine Fire Training & Education (MFT&E) to today’s Maine Fire Service Institute (MFSI).
That partnership represents something special about fire service training in Maine. Communities open their doors. Departments share their facilities. Instructors give their time. Firefighters travel from across the state to learn beside one another. We build something together that no single department or organization could build alone.
This little building played an important part in that history.
Live-fire evolutions were conducted here. Firefighter skills were taught and tested here. Recruits crawled these narrow hallways, stretched hose, climbed ladders, searched rooms, practiced rescue, and learned to trust their equipment—and one another.
For me, this one is personal.
As Director, I can look at this building and remember the many times I crawled those same narrow halls with new firefighters. I remember conducting RIC drills here with fire service professionals who, over the years, became trusted colleagues and good friends. I remember instructors standing outside preparing the next evolution and young firefighters walking out those doors tired, dirty, and a little more confident than when they entered.
There are a lot of memories inside those walls.
And now, the time has come for another chapter.
We are both sad and excited to see a new live-fire training facility being constructed at the Auburn Fire Department. It represents progress, improved capabilities, and another important piece of Maine's larger statewide fire training network. We believe the new facility will serve generations of firefighters just as this old building has.
But progress should never require us to forget.
Long before today's training standards, modern facilities, certification systems, and statewide programs, there were people who believed Maine firefighters deserved better training. They found locations. They built facilities. They volunteered as instructors. They hauled equipment, burned buildings, cleaned up afterward, and came back the next weekend to do it again.
They poured more than concrete foundations. They poured the foundation of the fire training system we have today.
To the City of Auburn, the Auburn Fire Department, its current members, its retirees, and all those who welcomed MFT&E and MFSI here over the past four decades: thank you.
Thank you for thousands of hours of cooperation, hospitality, instruction, and service to firefighters from communities far beyond Auburn.
As Maine fire training continues to move forward, we should occasionally look behind us—not because we want to go backward, but because we need to remember whose shoulders we are standing on.
The buildings will change.
The apparatus will change.
The equipment, standards, and science will continue to change.
But the mission remains remarkably simple:
Prepare firefighters to take care of one another and to serve the people who are counting on them when the alarm sounds.
This old building did that for more than 40 years.
Small building. Narrow halls. Countless memories.
An enormous legacy.
We will miss it.
But because of what happened within these walls, Maine's fire service is better prepared for what comes next.
Never forget where we have been as we build where we are going.
— James A. Graves, Director
Maine Fire Service Institute
