A vehicle driven by a teen struck Mapleton Firefighter Kurt Keilhofer as he was helping at a wreck in Union Township.

Source firehouse.com News

A Mapleton firefighter was struck and killed Tuesday morning as he worked along a road at a crash scene.

Kurt Keilhofer, 66, was struck on Hares Valley Road in Union Township about 7:30 a.m, WJAC reported.

Troopers said while crews were on the initial crash scene, a vehicle driven by a 19-year-old careened into the area and struck Keilhofer.

He was transported to Penn Highlands Huntingdon Hospital where was pronounced dead.

On its Facebook page, Mapleton Fire Department wrote: “It is with our deepest sorrow to even begin to say we lost a member today. A member that was not only encouraging of others, willing to help with anything, and do anything for anyone, but a member with a family, with friends. We are all struggling during this hard time. Firefighters in every company are a team, a second family, whenever we lose one of our own, it’s a different kind of pain. Thank you Kurt for your service, in the period of time you were in the department you made a big impact on all of our lives, and we can’t begin to thank you enough. Kurt was a wonderful guy to work beside, one that you wished there was more people like him in this world. Please keep everyone in your prayers during this hard time, thank you…”

Elizabeth Fire Department’s new apparatus will replace old and out-of-service units to better equip the department for current and future emergency call volume.

Source firehouse.com

APPLETON, Wis. (December 6, 2022) – Pierce Manufacturing Inc., an Oshkosh Corporation (NYSE:OSK) company, announced Elizabeth Fire Department in New Jersey has placed an order for seven custom Pierce fire apparatus, including two Arrow XT™ pumpers, a 100’ Heavy-Duty Rear Mount Aerial Ladder, two Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescues, a Non-Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescue tactical response unit, and a Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescue special operations vehicle. The new fire apparatus purchase was conducted through Pierce dealer, Fire and Safety Services, and is part of a fleet replacement initiative to both upgrade current vehicles and replace some out-of-service units to best equip the department’s seven firehouses with the management of increasing emergency call volume.

“When selecting and designing new fire apparatus, our department looks for safety, reliability, fleet continuity, sole-source manufacturing, and rugged construction which can stand up to our community’s varying terrain,” said Salvatore J. Barraco, chief of the Elizabeth Fire Department. “Adding new fire apparatus to our frontline fleet was a primary focus, but the opportunity to remove some older units and place them into reserve status was a huge benefit. 

Elizabeth Fire Department’s new fire apparatus will feature:

Pierce Arrow XT Pumpers

• Arrow XT chassis
• Cummins L9 450 hp engine
• 700-gallon water tank
• 2000 gpm single-stage pump
• Husky™ 3 foam system
• Low overall height of 10’11”

100’ Heavy-Duty Rear-Mount Aerial Ladder

• Arrow XT chassis
• Cummins X12 500 hp engine
• 8 kw generator 
• Low overall height of 11’1”
• 100’ heavy-duty aerial device with 500 lb tip load and short 12’ outrigger stance
• 207’ of ground ladders 
• Extended torque box

Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescue 1

• Arrow XT chassis with 46” two-door cab
• Cummins X15 500 hp engine
• 25.5’ walk-in rescue body
• Low overall height of 10’10”
• Multiplex electrical system
• Harrison 20 kw generator
• Front and rear winches, multiple hitch receivers, and rope anchor points
• 48’ of ground ladders

Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescue 2

• Arrow XT chassis with 67” cab
• Cummins X12 500 hp engine
• 23.5’ walk-in rescue body
• Low overall height of 10’8”
• Harrison 20 kw generator
• Front winch

Non-Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescue Tactical Response Unit         

• Freightliner M2-107 4×4 chassis
• 16’ Encore® rescue body
• Cummins L9 360 hp engine
• Low overall height of 10’7”
• Front winch

Walk-In Heavy-Duty Rescue Special Operations Vehicle

• Arrow XT 6×6 chassis with 57” cab
• 23.5’ walk-in rescue body
• Cummins L9 450 hp engine (with engine brake)
• Low overall height of 10’11”
• Custom interior body storage for trench rescue equipment
• Onan 10 kw diesel generator

“Pierce Manufacturing and the Fire and Safety Services team has worked with the Elizabeth Fire Department for many years with sales, parts, and service support,” said Gregg Cariddi, sales representative with Fire and Safety Services. “We’ve appreciated having the opportunity to work collaboratively to analyze the department’s unique needs and help select the most advanced fire apparatus to best support each critical mission they may encounter. Our team looks forward to continuing to build our relationship and providing dedicated service support for many years to come.”

The city of Elizabeth encompasses a population of over 135,000 people, with a wide range of street types and terrain, including residential and mixed-use roads, county highways, state and interstate highways, industrial roadways, marine shipping terminal roadways, airport grounds and more. The Elizabeth Fire Department operates seven fire stations with 276 personnel and responds to over 22,000 calls per year. The department’s fleet requires the use of heavy-duty fire apparatus that supports the varying type and volume of daily operations and specialty tasks, including technical rescue incidents.

Chief Barraco added, “As part of the Metro Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Strike Team, which consists of multiple New Jersey fire departments and other emergency services divisions working together, our spectrum of emergency service calls is broad. Our fire apparatus must support our daily operations and specialty tasks.”

City firefighters spent nearly two hours rescuing a dock worker who fell 40 feet Monday afternoon inside the hull of a container ship moored at the Port of Albany.

By Steve Hughes Source Times Union, Albany, N.Y. (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Dec. 6—ALBANY — City firefighters spent nearly two hours rescuing a dock worker who fell 40 feet Monday afternoon inside the hull of a container ship moored at the Port of Albany.

Rich Hendricks, the port’s CEO, said the longshoremen working on the ship were returning from their lunch break when the accident happened shortly before 1:30 p.m. To access the ship’s holds, workers descend a series of ladders and at some point, the man lost his grip, Hendricks said. The worker landed on a grate above the hold.

Fire Chief Joseph Gregory said the 61-year-old man suffered pelvic and upper leg injuries.

The department called in a physician from Albany Medical Center Hospital to help the victim and provide pain medication while they worked to stabilize and prepare to remove him from the ship.

Firefighters were able to perform a high-angle rescue with the aid of a port crane, dubbed ” Big Yellow.”

Once the man was medically stable, rescue crews secured him to a litter, known as a Stokes basket, and put him inside another basket that attached to the crane. The highly technical rescue was complicated by wind at the port, which threatened to send the baskets, along with its occupants, spinning through the air as it was lifted out of the hull, Gregory said.

The fire chief praised the firefighters who responded to the situation, calling their work, “textbook.”

He said the victim’s injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

The ship, the Reggeborg, had arrived to the port on Sunday after a stop in Searsport, Maine. The ship is registered to a Dutch company, Royal Wagenborg.

Kingston Fire Department Deputy Chief James Brunner said the train made contact with the rear bumper of the hatchback causing it to spin off the road.

Source Daily Freeman, Kingston, N.Y. (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Dec. 5—KINGSTON, N.Y. — A woman escaped serious injury after a train hit a car at the Foxhall Avenue crossing Monday morning, authorities said.

Kingston Fire Department Deputy Chief James Brunner said the woman, who was not immediately identified, was driving a Hyundai hatchback across the Foxhall Avenue crossing just before 9:30 a.m. when a southbound CSX train carrying mixed cargo made contact with the rear bumper of the hatchback causing it to spin off the road.

Brunner said firefighters were called to the scene at 9:28 a.m. and then the woman was transported by ambulance by Mobile Life Support Services to Health Alliance Hospital Broadway Campus with minor injuries. The woman was alone in the car.

Brunner said while firefighters had not yet seen video but they found the gates down when they arrived. “She must’ve attempted to go around them,” he said.

Brunner said the train blocked crossings in the city as far south as Smith Avenue.

She was lucky, Brunner said.

“Ten feet and it would’ve been a different outcome,” Brunner said.

Brunner said firefighters were on the scene for about 20 minutes and as they were leaving CSX staff were inspecting the train before it could set out again.

“They have protocols to check the train before they proceed,” he said.

The train later started proceeding south a bit after 10:30 a.m. A CSX employee at the scene said the train was being moved to clear the way for two northbound trains, but did not offer further details about its length or where it was going.

A new plan to cut as many as 2.4 million small trees from the New Jersey Pinelands has drawn criticism from some officials and environmental advocates.

By Steven Rodas Source nj.com (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A new plan to cut as many as 2.4 million small trees from a dense section of the New Jersey Pinelands as part of wildfire mitigation efforts by the state has drawn criticism from some officials and environmental advocates.

The initiative, officially called the “Allen and Oswego Road Fire Mitigation and Habitat Restoration Project,” was adopted by the New Jersey Pinelands Commission following a meeting Oct. 14 and is set to begin in 2023.

State officials said the tree cutting will focus on the smallest snow-bent pitch pine trees in a section of Bass River State Forest where trees have reached a density of about 2,000 per acre — compared to the average of 500 state officials say is elsewhere in the forest. The goal, according to the state, is to remove the small saplings that average about two inches in diameter as a way to bolster defenses against wildfires, which have only become more unpredictable over the years. While some activists say the cutting is justified, others worry about removing trees and the benefits of the carbon they store.

Environmental advocates said the plan is excessive and an uncommon step. One Pinelands Commission member said, especially in the age of climate change, the board approves tree cutting only in “rare circumstances” tied to fire control and diseased tree outgrowth.

John Cecil, State Parks, Forests, and Historic Sites assistant commissioner, said the project, which is expected to take a decade to complete, would represent the largest removal of small trees in the Pinelands “in recent history.” However, Cecil emphasized, that based on modeling his staff has performed — which takes into account factors like weather and other environmental conditions — a wildfire in the same section could mean the loss of or severe damage to between 4 and 12 million trees some of which are much larger than two inches.

“The selection of trees to be removed is a function of not only their number, but their size, position in the forest and the risks they pose by being susceptible to bark beetles and potential to carry wildfire from the ground to the forest canopy,” a DEP spokesman said in a statement.

As part of the plan, trees will be cut in an area that spans 1,300 acres in Bass River State Forest — a small portion of the 1.1-million-acre Pinelands National Reserve. About 90% of the trees will be cut within 1,100 acres of the forest section and 96% of the trees will be cut in the remaining area, which will total about 2.4 million trees, according to Lohbauer and fellow Pinelands Commissioner Edward Lloyd.

Of the 15-member Pinelands Commission, Mark Lohbauer and Theresa Lettman voted against the plan that includes the tree removal. Commissioner Doug Wallner abstained.

“I think it’s a bad precedent and goes against the state’s mandates with regard to climate change,” Pinelands Commissioner Mark Lohbauer, who voted against the plan in October, told NJ Advance Media over the phone.

“We have a state law in place, the Global Warming Response Act, that require us to do our utmost in terms of protecting sources of sequestration of carbon,” Lohbauer said. “Forest trees and other green plants in the forest are some of the greatest sources of sequestration that we have in New Jersey and I was not convinced that the Forest Service had a good reason for cutting down all of the trees that they are talking about.”

The tree cutting is expected to begin between April 15 and Nov. 15, 2023 when a threatened and endangered snake species is not hibernating, but not between May 1 and July 15, 2023 during peak bird breeding season, according to New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Larry Hajna.

“We cherish these forest resources and really want them to be as healthy and thriving as they can be,” Cecil added. “We’re concerned about firefighters’ safety, about people and property and concerned about the condition of the forest. If the forest catches on fire we’re going to lose a tremendous amount of carbon to the atmosphere, which is not what anyone wants. If we can take proactive measures to protect the carbon resource, protect people and property, it seems like a smart thing to do.”

To fight a recent wildfire that began at the Mullica River, crews employed a variety of tactics including controlled burns that can create barriers to slow down wildfires and by using “fuel breaks” — strips or blocks of vegetation or other materials used to divert fires or protect certain areas. In the case of the Wharton State Forest fire, one such proactive measure was a 5-mile stretch of road carved into the landscape, known as the Washington Turnpike project.

A similar means to slow the spread of future wildfires will be made available through the new plan, officials claimed. “The fire break operation will include a 25-foot clearing on either side of the road,” said Hajna, a DEP spokesman.

While discussing how dense the designated section of Bass River State Forest has become, Hajna and Cecil said the latest data from 2019 indicates the average number of trees per acre throughout the Pinelands is about 500. There are approximately 2,000 trees per acre in the section of forest targeted in the plan, they said.

“It’s really not accurate to talk about 2 million trees being cut because they’re not trees in the typical sense. They’re all the tiny little bent over saplings that are only (a few) inches wide, and they don’t have a chance of ever growing up tall,” said Emile DeVito, a staff biologist with Chester Township-based non-profit, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, who is in favor of the plan. “They are beneath the regular tall trees that make up the canopy.”

An aspect of the plan DeVito and others are opposed to is the possible use of herbicides to prevent invasive species regeneration. Use of the chemicals, they fear, could impact the aquifer that lays beneath the Pinelands and holds fresh drinking water.

The state said, “If herbicide treatment is necessary, the Forest Service will be using herbicides which are designed to not travel through soil and contaminate ground water.”