April 24, 2023 Three Springs Firefighter Adam Ewing is charged in connection with nearly two dozen wildfires.
Source firehouse.com News
An 18-year-old volunteer firefighter is behind bars, facing over 60 felony charges for allegedly lighting nearly two dozen wildfires.
Adam Ewing, of Three Springs, was charged by Bureau of Forestry for setting 21 fires in Huntingdon County in February and March, according to WTAJ,
At three fire scenes, forestry officials found toilet paper with roses. And the same brand was found at Ewing’s residence during a search.
Three Springs Fire Chief Chris Grace informed investigators that Ewing was the first to arrive at the fire station for the calls.
Also, a witness also observed him coming out of the woods just prior to a fire breaking out.
Ewing is behind bars in the Huntingdon County Prison in lieu of $500,000 bail. He’s facing 63 felony charges including 21 causing catastrophe charges, 21 risking catastrophe charges and 21 maliciously setting a fire to a forest.
April 23, 2023 Anaheim firefighters found the 45-foot-tall animatronic dragon engulfed in fire at Disneyland.
By Brady MacDonald, Brian Rokos Source The Orange County Register (TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Disney theme parks around the globe have temporarily suspended fire effects similar to those used in “Fantasmic” after the show’s 45-foot-tall animatronic dragon burst into a towering inferno during a performance of the nighttime spectacular at Disneyland.
The “Fantasmic” dragon caught fire during the final showing of the nighttime spectacular on Saturday, April 22 at the Anaheim theme park, according to Disneyland officials.
Anaheim Fire & Rescue quickly extinguished the flames and treated several Disneyland employees for smoke inhalation, according to Anaheim police Sgt. Jon McClintock. No Disneyland employees were hospitalized and no firefighters or visitors were injured, according to McClintock.
Anaheim Fire & Rescue and the Orange County Fire Authority sent engines and ambulances about 11 p.m. Saturday after receiving calls from Disneyland and park visitors who saw the dragon go up in flames.
The dragon was still fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived and they were dispatched with their gear on small boats across the Rivers of America to Tom Sawyer Island to extinguish the fire.
The fire did not spread to vegetation or adjacent buildings that serve as a backdrop for the nighttime spectacular on Tom Sawyer Island, McClintock said.
All employees were safely evacuated from Tom Sawyer Island where the show takes place, according to Disneyland officials. Visitors were evacuated from New Orleans Square and Critter Country and nearby attractions were closed due to smoke impacts from the fire.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, according to Disneyland officials. Anaheim Fire investigators were at Disneyland on Sunday, April 23 to determine the cause of the fire, McClintock said.
Disneyland crews assembled fences and scrims around the damage on Tom Sawyer Island on Sunday morning to cover the charred skeleton of the dragon, according to MiceChat.
Disney is temporarily suspending fire effects similar to those used at Disneyland’s “Fantasmic” at select shows and entertainment experiences globally out of an abundance of caution, according to Disney officials.
April 18, 2023 An FDNY chief said parts of the four-story parking garage in Manhattan pancake collapsed Tuesday afternoon.
By: Rocco Parascandola, Janon Fisher, Michael Gartland and Ellen Moynihan Source: New York Daily News(TNS) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
NEW YORK — One person was killed and five others were injured in a partial building collapse Tuesday in lower Manhattan, according to emergency officials.
The top floors of the four-story structure, a parking garage at Ann and Williams streets, “pancaked” just after 4 p.m., city officials said.
The upper floors packed with cars crumbled, sending the vehicles into the void below, photos taken from adjacent buildings show.
“A couple of floors of the concrete slab floors collapsed, crushed some of the cars that are inside,” FDNY Chief of Operations John Esposito said at a press conference near the scene.
The facade of the building also buckled and was in danger of falling into the street.
Details of the fatality were not immediately forthcoming.
Emergency workers blocked off the street as firefighters looked to extract people that could be trapped inside.
Six victims were taken to local hospitals, with one dying, four others in stable condition and another refusing medical attention, according to officials.
“We’re continuing to do searches, there are some cars in there that are crushed. We’re trying to see if we can get up close to make sure that there’s nobody in those cars. But as I said before, we believe that we had everybody accounted for,” Esposito said.
Firefighters initially entered the building to look for injured employees trapped in the rubble but then pulled out because the structure was deemed unstable and could collapse further.
A robot dog known as a Digidog and drones were sent inside, instead, to search the wreckage until officials determined that all the garage employees were accounted for.
“At this time, this building is completely unstable,” Mayor Eric Adams said alongside Esposito. “We’re using the necessary technology to be able to give a clear view of what’s happening inside the building for the most part, and to do whatever we can to see if there are any more victims.”
One worker got trapped on the remainder of the roof of the garage, according to Esposito.
Firefighters used a tower ladder to pluck the man off the roof and deliver him safely to the roof of a nearby building, the chief said.
“This was an extremely dangerous operation for our firefighters,” he added. “We responded to a call of a collapsed building. We had firefighters inside the building and development searches. The building was continuing to collapse.”
Jim Slattery, 64, parked his car in the garage just before the catastrophe while on his way to a doctor’s appointment.
He first grabbed a cup of coffee and walked past the scene on his way to his physician.
“I came out and there was a commotion on the street. Someone was telling me, ‘There’s a movie being shot.’ It’s New York City — everything is always going on,” said Slattery, a Staten Island engineer.
He went to the doctor’s and his phone started ringing.
“My wife’s calling, my friend’s calling me — because they know I’m down here today,” he said.
He was stunned when the doctor’s employees told him about the collapse.
“I guess I should play lotto,” he joked. “But I was struck by it. It hasn’t settled in yet … It’s my lucky day,” he said.
The Virginia Beach Fire Department is mourning the loss of one of its team members.
The department announced on Monday night that Cpt. Matt “Chevy” Chiaverotti died of cancer, signifying a line-of-duty death.
“It is impossible to describe the depth of Chevy’s impact on our department and the tragedy of losing him far too soon,” the announcement reads.
Chiaverotti was diagnosed with anaplastic thyroid cancer, a metastatic carcinoma, when he was 43 years old, according to a a GoFundMe set up for his wife Sara and his son Gus.
Chiaverotti had more than 20 years with the Virginia Beach Fire Department. Some of his most recent service was as the captain of Engine 7, the “busiest engine” in the VBFD, the GoFundMe states. He was also a Search Team Manager with FEMA Virginia Task Force 2 and had been with the team for more than 16 years.
“While firefighters are possibly exposed to cancer causing carcinogens at every structure fire they respond to, (the crash of an F/A-18D Hornet jet in Virginia Beach) involved burning carbon fiber and copious amounts of firefighting foam,” a note from the GoFundMe reads. “Exposure to burning carbon fiber and firefighting foam has been linked to cause cancer. Chevy also has deployed many times with VATF2 and has responded to disasters to assist citizens in the US, Haiti and Puerto Rico.”
It is with deep sadness and a heavy heart that we share the line of duty passing of Captain Matt “Chevy” Chiaverotti. It is impossible to describe the depth of Chevy’s impact on our department & the tragedy of losing him far too soon.@IAFFLocal2924#VATF2#captain#firefighterpic.twitter.com/zzbr8VAIUP
Chicago firefighters tackled a stubborn fire in a pallet yard Monday evening.
Crews deployed four master streams and six hand lines on the fire that involved high density pallets and raw wood to make them, Chicago Fire PIO Larry Langford tweeted.
Command requesting class A foam unit to the scene to help choke of oxygen to stack pallets which continue to burn at 25 and Rockwell pic.twitter.com/IVZc3XvUMe
A 5-year-old boy, his baby sister and their father were killed Monday in a Lithia mobile home fire, and their brother and mother were taken to a hospital.
It happened around 1 p.m. in a small mobile home park in the in the 8600 block of Pritcher Road, a little east of the Polk County line.
Mother Veronica Bermudez, 22, told authorities that she and her husband, Angel Lopez Sr., 22, were sleeping when their 3-year-old son Elijah woke them up and said the stove was on fire, according to Hillsborough County Sheriff’s officials. Bermudez grabbed the boy and headed for an exit. She and Elijah escaped from their burning home, but her husband and their two other children — 5-year-old son Angel Jr. and 14-month-old daughter Harmony — did not.
”She said the last thing she remembers is turning around and seeing her husband with the other two children walking behind her,” Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a news conference. “She got outside and they never made it outside.”
Bermudez called 911 to report that her home was on fire and her husband and two of her kids still were inside, the sheriff said. Within 12 minutes, crews arrived on the scene and discovered the home was engulfed in flames. The roof collapsed as first responders tried to enter.
A deputy who responded “couldn’t get within 20 feet of that trailer” because the fire was so intense, Chronister said. “He said, ‘Sheriff, I have never felt more helpless in my entire life. The only thing I was able to do was to try and comfort, to no avail, this mother and her 3-year-old son.’”
Neighbors gathered in the afternoon heat along a dirt road where yellow tape was strung near emergency vehicles. They gazed at the charred mobile home, its roof crumpled.
Suzette Peña, a cousin to the mother, spoke through tears about what Bermudez had told her of what occurred. She described the 3-year-old waking Bermudez from a nap.
“He walked in the room saying, ‘Mommy, mommy, the house is on fire,’” Peña said.
As Bermudez escaped through the front door, wind from outside seemed to stir the flames, Peña said.
“There was no way for her to go back for her husband and her two kids,” she said.
Firefighters were concerned the flames might spread to nearby mobile homes due to the dry conditions, but they were able to prevent that from happening, he said.
The cause of the fire is unknown. Hillsborough County Fire Rescue was investigating.
Peña expressed frustration that the emergency response wasn’t quicker. She spoke of anger. Bermudez and her family are devastated, she said.
“She’s really heartbroken,” Peña said through tears. “She wishes her life to be over.”
Veronica and Angel Sr. met as teenagers, Peña said. Angel was “an amazing dad,” she said. He was in the process of trying to find a job. They struggled, Peña said, to pay bills.
“They learned to be adults together because they were just kids,” she said.
Bermudez worked at a convenience store called 7-Star, which is near where the family lived.
She’d worked the early morning shift Monday, from 2 to 11 a.m., Peña said. She was napping before she hoped to pick up a second shift Monday afternoon to help pay the family’s bills.
The family also lost two dogs in the fire, Peña said.
Bermudez lived with her parents before moving into the mobile home in January, her cousin said. She will probably move back in with them now, Peña said. Most of Bermudez’s belongings are gone. She escaped the fire wearing only a nightgown, Peña said.
Peña said the mobile home park has had electrical problems, and she wonders if the fire’s cause was electrical.
Chronister said he talked to Bermudez’s father, who had dropped off 14-month-old Harmony about an hour before the fire started.
”He was telling me, ‘Sheriff, this is a hard-working family, they pay by the week here, the two of them hustle to try to pay their bills to make sure they’re able to provide food in these little babies’ stomach and a shelter and roof over their head,’” Chronister said.
“Please say a prayer for this young mother, who lost two of her children and her husband,” Chronister said.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Due to incorrect information provided by the Hillsborough Sheriff’s Office, an earlier version of this story misidentified the gender of the 5-year-old boy who died in the fire.
The Indiana Department of Homeland Security will be actively monitoring EMS certification exams at Muncie Fire Department following allegations of widespread cheating.
“Additional staff have been re-routed to make sure the exams are proctored and handled properly. We have sent additional staff from the Fire & Public Safety Academy to sit in on those proctors, and there are plans where we’ve basically taken over oversight on the state certification exams,” IDHS public information officer David Hosick told WTHR.
Staff members, who called out one or more high-ranking MFD officers, told the investigative reported that ‘hundreds of questions and answers from state and national certification exams” were collected and shared.
“The leadership who’s hosting these classes will proctor the exams. They’re taking pictures of computer screens, then down the road actually showing future students pictures of those tests and the questions,” one of the staff members told the reporter.
Other agencies investigating the cheating include the National Registry of EMTs, State EMS director and the Indiana State Fire Marshal’s Office.
Two Floral Park firefighters were injured when their truck hit a bridge pillar as they were responding to a building fire.
The wreck happened near the Long Island Rail Road overpass, according to News12.
One of the firefighters was transported to the hospital.
They were headed to assist at a basement fire in a commercial business.
Conditions were too dangerous for firefighters to stay inside, so they fought the flames and smoke from the street.
“Basement fires are always the most challenging for any fire department. Usually it’s one way in and one way out, which makes it very dangerous,” Nassau County Chief Fire Marshal Michael Uttaro told reporters, adding that 125 firefighters from 17 departments responded.
The fire destroyed a half dozen businesses. Three firefighters were injured at the scene.
