No the Lincoln Financial building is not on fire, but if you drive past in the morning for the rest of the week you have every reason to think it is.

The Greensboro Fire Department is conducting high rise fire fighting exercises in the Lincoln Financial office tower at 101 N. Elm Street Wednesday through Friday and one lane of North Greene Street and one lane of West Market Street next to the building will be closed to traffic during the mornings.

Assistant Fire Chief Dwayne Church said, “It’s very rare that we get to conduct training like this.  We’re very appreciative to Lincoln Financial for letting us do this.”

Church said that the for the fire department the timing of the exercise had worked out well.  He said, “We had just finished rewriting out guidelines for high rise fires and they looked really good on paper, but we wanted to put them to the test.”

The simulated fire in the building was on the 14thfloor on Wednesday.  Lincoln Financial was able to make the area available for the exercise because it’s under renovation.

Church said the first team up had to locate the floor the simulated fire was on and hook the hoses to the standpipe on the floor below.  Church said that in this case they used compressed air to inflate the hoses instead of water so they didn’t make a huge mess and emphasized again that it was a simulated fire.

Church said they used simulated smoke to restrict the visibility and there was a victim that the fire fighters had to find and rescue.

“In Case of Fire Do Not Use The Elevator Use The Stairway” is a sign everyone has seen a thousand times, but Church said that in a high rise fire after the first team goes up the stairs, the elevators are secured by the fire department and if the elevators are working the firefighters use the elevators rather than wasting time and energy going up the stairs.

The exercises started Wednesday morning and will be held from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Thursday and Friday also.