The Buffalo firefighter who perished in a four-alarm fire Wednesday has been is 37-years old and was assigned to Engine 2.
“The hardest thing, actually, was keeping our firefighters from entering the building to rescue our fallen firefighter in the building. That was the most difficult part of it,” Renaldo said at an afternoon press conference.
A mayday call was issued early in the operation while crews
The commissioner said due to significant damage, it will be a while before firefighters can get into the building.
Firefighters were called to DC Theatricks on Main Street just before 10 a.m.
Smoke and flames could be seen for several miles.
“I was one of the first people out here and for a few seconds it was just smoke,” Jason Colston told 2 On Your Side. “The there was a burst of flames and you could hear the floor fall and the firefighters started yell about how the floor it fell.”
Manchester-by-the-Sea firefighters train to hone their skills.
Firefighters in a small North Shore town are shooting back an idea from the town administrator that police officers undertake volunteer fire training to help the department through staffing shortages, a problem rattling small communities nationwide.
The Manchester-by-the-Sea Fire Department has been without a volunteer crew since last summer, leaving an understaffed full-time workforce which has sparked the need for creative solutions, Town Administrator Greg FederspIel told the Herald on Friday.
The idea also includes public works employees and residents. Those who sign on as a volunteer would supplement full-time firefighters at large-scale incidents, acting in similar fashion as when the department receives mutual aid from other towns, Federspiel said.
Union President Bob Cavender, in an interview with the Herald, expressed concern over the “huge lag time in getting a police officer up to speed to even be credentialed” to respond to a working fire. The police department, he said, is also dealing with shortages.
“The police department is a fellow brother in a public safety goal,” Cavender said. “As professional firefighters, it is a little insulting and a little off the beaten path. Nobody went to our union or over this.”
The department has just 11 full-time certified firefighters, two of which have yet to go to the fire academy to gain certification, union Vice President Bill Kenyon said. The town last July disbanded the department’s volunteer crew as its roster dwindled to just three active members, who were paid per call, he said.
Manchester-by-the-Sea, a coastal town on Cape Ann, has a rough population of just over 5,400.
Currently, one of the department’s four squads — manned by one lieutenant and two firefighters — is down to just two members, making it nearly impossible to guarantee safety for all at a fire scene or car crash, Kenyon said.
“It is disappointing the stance that the town has taken on this,” he said. “It’s really concerning in terms of what the future holds. I don’t know when I go in for the next shift what’s going to happen.”
To help overcome challenges, the department had been backfilling vacancies to ensure it stayed at three firefighters per shift, using overtime to do so at the chief’s discretion, Cavender said. That practice came to a halt last week at Federspiel’s request, according to a letter the union released this week.
By early January, the department had spent $100,000 more in overtime than the budgeted $125,000 for this fiscal year, which ends June 30, Federspiel said. Voters at a town meeting in April will decide whether they approve a supplemental budget that allows more overtime funding and for the three-firefighters-on-duty level to be restored, he said.
“My problem is I can’t spend money that the voters haven’t approved,” Federspiel said. “We needed to take a step back and say, ‘Wait a minute. What’s going on here?’”
The union says it feels like the town is silencing its voice. Federspiel told the department last week it had to put down a sign that alerted residents the understaffing forced an engine out of service.
“Our only goal was to keep the public informed of the situation so they know because it directly affects them,” Kenyon said.
In the past, there never had been a sign indicating staffing levels outside the fire department, Federspiel told the Herald, adding that the union didn’t seek permission to put it up from the Select Board.
The union on Wednesday filed charges against the town with the state Department of Labor and Milton-based law firm Barrault and Associates, LLC. The charges allege the town’s actions violate a handful of state laws.
“The town is just not really doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” attorney Ally Presskeicher said. “They are putting the community at risk. It’s really not something that the union and firefighters in general can sit back and allow to happen.”
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.”
