Firefighters in San Bernardino narrowly escaped injury early Tuesday when the facade came crashing down.
The heavy smoke firefighters encountered soon broke out into a massive fire, according to CBS.
Firefighters took a defensive posture to extinguish the blaze. Luckily the captain noticed seconds before and both were able to escape before the collapse, Onscene TV reported.
Athens — Dozens of people died in central Greece when a freight train collided with a passenger train on Tuesday night.
At least 36 people were killed in the head-on crash, according to emergency services. Sixty-six people were taken to hospital, some of them with serious injuries.
The Greek government ordered three days of national mourning for the victims.
Rescue workers were using cranes and other heavy equipment to try and lift the derailed train cars to search for survivors, according to reporters at the crash site near the city of Larissa. Images showed that the front two cars of each train had been destroyed and burnt out.
The passenger train coming from Athens en route to the northern port city of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a commercial train travelling in the opposite direction.
The passenger train, the Inter City 62, had departed from the Greek capital at 7:22 pm ( 1722 GMT) on Tuesday evening.
Some 350 passengers were said to have been on board.
The cause of the accident was unclear, although initial speculation point to human error.
According to media reports, the electronic guidance system on the track was not working. There had been problems with it for some time, leaving staff to decide on some stretches which track the trains should go on.
Videos broadcast on local television showed several wrecked train cars at the crash site near the municipality of Tempi.
“There was chaos and incredible noise,” a survivor told state broadcaster ERT.
The crash occurred on a line connecting Athens with Thessaloniki that was modernized over the past years.
The railway official responsible for the line was arrested following the crash, ERT reported.
Despite the modernization, which included new tunnels and bridges as well as two tracks along the 500-kilometre route, there were still significant problems with the electric coordination of traffic control, according to the Greek train drivers’ union.
“We travel from one part of the line to the next by radio, just like in the old days. The station managers give us the green light,” the union’s president Kostas Genidounias explained on state radio.
Greece’s railway, Hellenic Train, is operated by Italy’s state-owned railway company Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane.
Firefighters and officers in DeKalb County will again see a boost in pay.
Just four months after getting a raise, county officials approved a 6.5 percent pay hike, according to 11 Alive.
The raise for firefighters will go to captains and below, paramedics and emergency medical technicians.
The new plan calls for $46,500 for recruits, $3,000 hiring incentive and $48,825 for firefighters.
Starting salaries for officers goes to $50,500, up from $47,000.
Raises come as part of the county’s plan to stay competitive with hiring and improve retention.
This raise will make officers in the county the highest paid among large local governments in the state, the station reported, quoting a press release.
Feb. 28, 2023 Ambulances in the Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services are getting new stretchers and stair chairs in a $2.4 million technological upgrade.
Feb. 15—Ambulances in the Frederick County Division of Fire and Rescue Services are getting new stretchers and stair chairs this week to provide better patient and provider safety, Fire Chief Tom Coe said.
This week, all 43 volunteer and career ambulances are each getting one new stretcher and one new stair chair, Coe said.
Lift systems for the stretchers are being installed into ambulances that don’t already have one, to allow for stretchers to be lifted in and out of the ambulance with the push of a button.
The stretchers, which come from the medical technology company Stryker, are battery powered, so they can be lifted up and down with a button, rather than having a person bend over and lift heavy weight, Tom DeLore, a Stryker representative, said.
The total cost for the upgrades is $2.4 million, Coe said.
“So, the lift systems that we’re installing in the ambulance, the power cots … are a huge reducer of risk for our employees and in turn, they improve the safety for our patients that we’re transporting on a daily basis,” he said.
The upgrades increase safety for providers by removing the constant bending over and lifting that comes with taking a patient out of a house, into an ambulance, out of the ambulance and into the hospital.
They also increase patient safety, since the stretchers and lift system allow for more stability.
The stretchers can lift up to 700 pounds, DeLore said. There’s also a button to set the stretcher at a standard level to roll the stretcher, so it won’t be too high to tip over or too low when the patient is being taken to the ambulance.
The lift system also takes the load off providers from having to haul a stretcher in and out of the ambulance. Emergency services personnel will now pull the stretcher out, press a button to lower the legs of the stretcher and remove it from the ambulance, all while keeping the patient in a stable, horizontal position.
It works the opposite way to put the stretcher in the ambulance.
The stair chairs can help providers bring people down stairs, with limited jostling. It extends into a stretcher-type chair, and has treads on the bottom to stay stable while rolling down stairs.
The upgrade also allows for standardization for ambulances. Some ambulances had newer cots and lift systems, but others had the older cots that require heavy lifting and unfolding stretchers.
Firefighter and EMT Corey Rice, who is usually stationed in Urbana, which had a newer stretcher system that didn’t require a lot of heavy lifting, said he’s excited about having better equipment.
“I would have to, like, fully lift the full weight of a person. Now, you can literally load them up with one finger basically,” he said.
For him, standardizing the equipment is what he would feel most, considering that he moves from station to station.
“Going into, like, work at other stations, you definitely feel the difference,” he said.
The stretchers and stair chairs should last about 10 and 7 years, respectively, DeLore said, but the county is under a service plan that should extend the life expectancy of the equipment.
Fire and Rescue Deputy Chief of Administrative Services Steve Leatherman said the upgrade will also help Fire and Rescue save money, since it can transfer the equipment to new ambulances rather than buying all new equipment.
Authorities in Ray County were investigating a residential fire in Richmond, Missouri, that killed three people, including a child, early Tuesday morning.
Firefighters were called to the blaze around 4:30 a.m. and arrived to find a home “fully engulfed” in the 1000 block of West Lexington Street, the Richmond Police Department said in a Facebook post on Tuesday evening. Richmond police detectives and Ray County Sheriff’s deputies were called to the scene of the fire to investigate.
The call brought firefighters from Richmond and nearby Lawson and Lexington.
The origin of the fire was not known on Tuesday. The Missouri State Fire Marshal’s Office was investigating, police said.
Details about the three fire victims were not released by police on Tuesday.
In a Facebook post, Richmond School District Superintendent Bryan Copple said a sixth grader had died Tuesday morning and resources were being made available to affected students. Friends and family said on social media that the child was killed in the blaze along with his father and his father’s girlfriend.
Children, 8 and 10, a mother and a grandfather in Frayser are dead following a house fire early Tuesday.
A surviving father, who arrived to find his house in flames, tried to bust windows in an attempt to save his family. But he and neighbors were not successful, according to ABC24.
He was taken to Regional One Hospital’s burn unit in critical condition.
It took firefighters about 20 minutes to bring the flames under control. No firefighters were injured.
Firefighters have not determined if smoke alarms were present.
Former FDNY assistant chiefs who were demoted by Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh have filed a lawsuit demanding they and other chiefs affected by the recent shakeup in the upper ranks be reinstated.
The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn state court on Monday names Assistant Chiefs Joe Jardin, Michael Gala and Fred Schaaf as plaintiffs. Kavanagh relegated all three to deputy chief earlier this month.
She made the demotions after bringing her grievances regarding the three chiefs to John “Jack” Hodgens, the most senior uniformed official in the agency, and Chief of Fire Operations John Esposito, but the men didn’t reprimand the trio, sources said.
They were considered “bad apples” sources have told the Daily News.
In the aftermath of the demotions, multiple high-ranking members of the department gave up their own positions in protest, including Hodgens, Esposito and Deputy Assistant Chief Michael Massucci — who is named as the fourth plaintiff in the suit.
The suit demands 11 chiefs total, including the plaintiffs, get their old jobs back.
The lawsuit claims that without the recently demoted chiefs, the city is lacking in experienced incident commanders — or chiefs who mobilize firefighters into action and supervise blazes — and that when the demotions go into effect next month, there will be no chiefs who have ever served as incident commanders on a five-alarm fire.
The FDNY did not immediately answer a request for comment. The city Law Department said it will review the case.
The filing claims Kavanagh has “abused the office of fire commissioner” and “put the public and members of the FDNY at risk.”
“Kavanagh’s brief tenure as FDNY commissioner has shown what happens when a political operative is put in charge of a public-safety agency as vital as the FDNY,” the suit reads.
The plaintiffs are seeking a reversal on “the Commissioner’s recent retaliatory decisions.”
“These are some of the same firefighters who put their own lives at risk on September 11 and on countless other occasions to uphold their oath to protect New Yorkers from lethal fires,” said the chiefs’ attorney Jim Walden. “To remove these experienced officials from their essential safety functions puts lives at risk and is simply a gross misjudgment and dereliction of duty by the Commissioner.”
The training drill brought smiles and a flood of emotions for Sandy Springs firefighters and their tiny fans.
The rappelling exercise at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will be a fond memory for many.
“Not everyone wants someone in the room with the kids, so it was a cool way of them getting to be close to us without us having to go in their rooms,” Capt. Kyle Sweeney told FOX5.
He said crews formed an instant bond as they saw the children’s eyes light up. There were fist bumps and high-fives through the glass.
“It really brightened his day,” said Zach Lansdell, whose son Levi has been in the hospital for 200 days.
“It really made a huge impact on Levi and was a huge morale booster,” said Zach, adding that it was one of his three-year-old son’s best days.
Lt. Chris Mileshko was among the firefighters. His father’s video company, Mileshko.com, took some unforgettable photos of video of the special day.
After their high-angle introduction, the firefighters went inside to visit. But, it didn’t end there.
Some have developed friendships with parents and have gone back to spend time.
San Antonio police continue to search for the person who fired shots while firefighters were tending to a patient early Sunday.
Someone drove up to the crew and said they were being followed, according to KENS 5.
“An argument ensued between the occupants of the vehicles. The crew then heard gunfire from those vehicles and proceeded to take cover,” SAFD Spokesman Woody Woodward said, adding it does not appear that the firefighters were the intended target.
Radio traffic obtained by the station indicated that when the bullets were flying, the firefighters ducked for cover and then left.
They sustained minor cuts and bruises.
Police said Monday they are still investigating the incident.
