The Eau Claire County SWAT team stormed a couple of buildings in Eau Claire Thursday afternoon.

Normally laughter wouldn't follow a flash bang, but Eau Claire's former Country Kitchen restaurant was the seen of SWAT training; something that in the long run is really no laughing matter.

"We train so we don't have to talk about us being killed or someone in our area being killed," says Lt. Rod Stearns, Eau Claire County’s SWAT Commander.

Lt. Stearns’ team trains once a month. And once a year, they focus on flash-bangs, chemical training, and impact training with bean bags and rubber bullets designed to get someone to drop a weapon, without deputies having to resort to lethal rounds. It's training Lt. Stearns suspects people in Eau Claire may have mixed feelings about being right out in the open.

"In the last year, how many times have law enforcement officers had someone shoot at them, armed robberies, bank robberies, burglaries? (There’s) a variety of different things taking place that then escalate. The incidents keep increasing and that means our training does have to become more challenging, more proficient," Stearns says.

Lt. Stearns says the team can't sugar-coat things in training because the members have to be prepared every time they get the call in order to save lives.

"I suspect deep down anyone who ever gets to that point of crisis is going to hope we're well-prepared, well-trained, and capable of handling the situation to the best of our ability. The only way for us to do that is to train in the matter we train and to the extreme that we train," Stearns says.

The SWAT team trains in different buildings throughout the year. Lt. Stearns says with tough budgets they rely heavily on grant money to keep the training going.