FARMINGTON — The white smoke along the ceiling seemed almost innocent. After all, who hasn't had a smoky room before?

But as the fire raged in a bedroom down the hall, the smoke turned from white to gray to brown.

It roiled along the ceiling, creeping lower and lower until vision was obscured above 5 feet.

As the heat began to rise, firefighters took to a knee to stay below the most toxic smoke, though their tanks provided plenty of fresh air.

They reached the bedroom and opened the door, allowing the fire to breathe for just a moment. But rejuvenated by fresh air, the fire began sucking oxygen so fast that it was impossible to close the door again.

They watched for a minute as flames began licking the ceiling of the hallway where they knelt with hose in hand. And when the flames reached overhead and into a nearby bedroom, it was time to put the fire out.

You see, this was practice, about as real a practice as you could expect for the Farmington Fire Department. Wednesday was their third day of fire training in real homes in as many weeks.

Farmington purchased the two homes, located at 166 and 176 S. Main, to make room for a new City Hall. Instead of paying for traditional demolition, the city figured its volunteer fire department could take a crack at it.

That means knowing how to start fires and how to put them out.

So they've practiced working a kitchen fire, lighting a paper towel roll and watching until the cabinets were consumed before putting it out.

They practiced in the basement, lighting a donated sofa on fire and watching as the vertical blinds melted and dropped off of their valance and the window cracked and broke from the heat.

Room by room, they set fires and took turns watching how fire acts before putting it out with a well-aimed stream of water. They broke down and cut through doors and practiced talking over the radio, which can be hard to understand when your adrenaline is flowing, you're wearing a breathing mask and other people are shouting.

Last week, they burned another basement room, a bedroom and a garage, where aerosol cans exploded as fire gnarled its way to the vaulted ceiling.

The pièce de resistance will come Wednesday, when the fire department will burn the homes to the ground while keeping the fires from spreading.

So far, everyone has come out safely. Not bad for a volunteer fire department.

Though, in fairness, about a third of the firefighters work as full-time firefighters in other cities. A few work or have worked in law enforcement. Some are business owners, and there's at least one full-time student. But they all live in Farmington.