HOT SPRINGS — The Hot Springs Fire Department has requested changes to its physical fitness test for new hires, telling the Civil Service Commission some elements of the current test don’t simulate the physical demands of the fire ground.

Applicants have to pass physical and written tests before they can be interviewed by the commission, which ranks the applicants. The state code empowers the commission to set rules and regulations for the city’s civil service system, including adopting rules for physical examinations.

Changes requested at the commission’s August meeting included adding a dead weight carry/drag, replacing the 125-pound barbell carry. Instead of carrying a barbell 100 feet, applicants would have to move a 160-pound victim simulator over that distance.

The Keiser Sled would replace the waist bend. Fire Chief Ed Davis told the commission many departments use the simulated forcible entry chopping device to test applicants’ proficiency with an ax. They stand astride a weighted beam and use a sledgehammer to drive the beam behind them.

“If you’ve never been on a fire department, you’re still going to be able to do these things,” Davis told the commission. “The one thing we didn’t want to do was put firefighting things there that people had no idea how to perform.”

Applicants would have two minutes and 30 seconds to complete the dead weight carry/drag, Keiser Sled and beam walk. The latter requires a 3-inch rolled hose to be carried 20 feet across a 4-inch beam. The department’s new hire committee told the commission several of the city’s firefighters completed the three elements in just over one minute on average, even after running almost a mile beforehand.

Applicants have to run 1.5 miles in 13 minutes, do 35 situps and 25 pushups. After a two-minute break, they begin the back half of the test, which also includes climbing and descending a 58-foot aerial ladder oriented at a 60-degree angle within four minutes.

“The run, pushups and situps get people to a point of exhaustion,” Davis told the commission. “When they’re exhausted, if they can perform these basic functions, they’re going to be fine. I wish we could set a building on fire, and they could go through it and hit that point of exhaustion and demonstrate it that way, but that’s just not practical.”

Davis said he and his command staff have lost weight to demonstrate the importance of maintaining physical fitness.

“All of us have done things to try and be a good example,” he told the commission. “I’m almost 60 and still run three times a week. We’re trying to set a good example for the people below us.”