ChicagoAreaFire.com reports a firefighter refused treatment for a knee injury after a mayday was called at a two-alarm townhouse fire late Thursday night on Custer Court in Wheeling, Illinois. You can hear the handling of the mayday shortly after the 4:00 minute mark on the video above from Larry Shapiro. Read the details and view Larry's photos at ChicagoAreaFire.com.
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House fire in Wheeling, Illinois: Firegeezer.com has the Larry Shapiro pictures and details to go with the video above from what started out as a dryer fire Saturday morning.
Can we laugh at ourselves?: The topic is the first two webisodes of the series Hosed on YouTube (webisode 1 here and webisode 2 here). Did you laugh at Reno 911? For the Firegeezer crowd, how about Car 54 Where are You? Do you believe that Rescue Me makes the public think all New York firefighters are drug addicts, sex addicts, philanderers and wife beaters? The large majority of people who commented so far on STATter911.com about comedian Juston McKinney’s Hosed think it is just a funny series of shorts about a fictional volunteer fire department in New Hampshire. And like all good satire, it has some characters many of us can identify with. Others see it is something more sinister. That Dave Statter is running it because he is anti-volunteer. Does anyone out there honestly think I wouldn’t post them if this was about a fictional career fire department? Some who have written comments to STATter911.com and Firefighter Nation’s Facebook page believe Hosed does nothing but make volunteers look bad. Should volunteer firefighters be off limits to comedians? Bill Carey at Backstep Firefighter put together some of those comments and provides his own unique response.
Raw video from mayday in Southern Maryland: In Calvert County there was a mayday during a house fire on Saturday in Lusby. Raw video shows a firefighter being carried from the building. There is a lot of video to look at with this clip. Click here.
Fast food apparently not fast enough: A fire truck in the United Kingdom almost made its own drive thru at a fast food joint. That, fire trucks for sale and much more in a long Valentine’s Day rundown of apparatus news from Glenn Usdin’s FireTruckBlog.com.
Schultz versus Beck on firefighter pensions: The MSNBC host (with help from the IAFF) takes on the Fox News host and his views about firefighter pensions. Click here to see videos from both sides.
Is a 1997 fire leaving a deadly legacy?: That’s the question being asked in Hamilton, Ontario following the deaths and serious illness of firefighters who were on the Plastimet fire 14-years-ago. TheSpec.com reports the four day industrial blaze had such high levels of hydrochloric acid that metal on fire trucks melted. Check out the story.
Connecticut’s OSHA cites Bridgeport in firefighter deaths: Click here to read what CONN-OSHA listed as violations following its investigation into the deaths last year of Lt. Steven Velasquez and Firefighter Michael Baik. The department is fighting the charges. You will also see that Dave takes a little swipe at the news media coverage of this story.
He does more than make us laugh & stir trouble … he even shows up at a fire every so often: Will Wyatt recently had to go underground after exposing the world to TIMIS in his FireRescue1.com column (click here for the column and the comments). Rather than to organize a telethon to wipe out this awful syndrome, Will just went into hiding. But he surfaced last week at his real job and snapped the picture to the right of a two-alarm apartment fire in Harris County, Texas. If you want to read about the fire and see some video, click here. By the way, Tiger Schmittendorf is the latest to discover that Will’s book And a Paycheck, Too! is quite funny (click here to buy it). Tiger plans to have Will on his Firefighter Storytellers netcast in April (check out Tiger’s other shows, including his recent interview with Fire Chief’s Janet Wilmoth).
Even checking fire hydrants isn’t safe: In Syracuse, New York, a firefighter making sure hydrants are clear of snow found himself threatened by a knife wielding man. Click here for the story.
Two-alarms in Baltimore County, Maryland: The picture at left is from Michael “firepix1075” Schwartzberg from a house fire yesterday in Chestnut Ridge. Click here for his video. Here’s what Michael wrote about the fire-
“Units reported smoke showing while responding, and when units from nearby Chestnut Ridge Volunteer Fire Company arrived they were met with heavy smoke in the rear of the house, where the fire possibly started on a porch. The fire extended into the attic and roof area and flames vented through the roof. Access to the house was extremely limited, making firefighting operations challenging. This area has no fire hydrants, so firefighters had to use a tanker shuttle, bringing water from a hydrant more than a mile away via fire department water tankers.”
Response time concerns in Minneapolis: The union, worried about budget and staffing cuts that have occurred, and possibly more on the way, says 11 minutes is too long for a ladder truck to show up on the scene of a house fire. That’s what happened Saturday on Beard Avenue South. The fire chief says he is looking into it. So is a TV station. Click here to read and watch the story.
Early arrival of photographer for Burrillville, Rhode Island explosion & fire: Matt Gregoire from has the first units on the scene as a garage fire extends to the attached home on Mt. Pleasant Road yesterday. The homeowner was seriously burned. The fire went to a second alarm. More at providencefirevideos.com.
A woman who lived in an apartment in a home on South Park Street in the Woodsdale section of Wheeling, West Virginia says her cat woke her when fire broke out yesterday morning (WheelingFire.com reports the fire is in Ohio County). The early video (above) starts just after Engine 10 from the Wheeling Fire Department, with quarters just two blocks way, arrived on the scene. The video is from WheelingFire.com. Here is an excerpt from the website’s report on the fire:
Engines 2 and 5 with Ladder 1 and Rescue 1 arrived on scene moments later and together, the crews made an aggressive interior attack. Engine 11 came in to supply Engine 2 and Ladder 1. The electric company had a longer than normal response time and the live wires and electricity presented a danger to the firefighters. Since the resident was out safely, firefighters were forced out of the structure until the power could be cut off. The fire extended upwards and crews went on a defensive attack with the bucket of Ladder 1 up and flowing water.
Below is a report from WTRF-TV that includes video taken later in the operation after the fire became a defensive operation. Here is more from WTRF-TV:
Firefighters said the fire spread throughout the two-story house very fast.
They said the layout of the house and the origin of the fire made it difficult for crews to put out the flame.
“Initial crews found heavy fire in the basement but there was an electric hazard there. We had to wait for AEP to get here and cut power to the structure, so we had to fight the fire from the outside until then,” said Wheeling Assistant Fire Chief Jim Blazier.
Emergency radio traffic from Wheeling, Illinois plane crash. Two dead after Royal Air Freight Learjet on final approach ends up in the Des Plaines River.
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Above is raw video from the ground. Click here for more ground video of recovery efforts. Here is raw video from a press briefing. Watch WGN-TV news coverage.
From the AP:
A small cargo jet from Waterford-based Royal Air Freight crashed into a forest preserve Tuesday afternoon shortly after being cleared to land at a suburban Chicago airport, with officials saying that it appears the two people aboard were killed.
A preliminary investigation indicated a pilot and co-pilot were aboard the jet that crashed into the Des Plaines River in unincorporated Glenview as it was making its final approach about 1:30 p.m. to Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling, said Glenview Fire Department Battalion Chief Jim Fancher. He said emergency crews were on the scene, including divers.
The Federal Aviation Administration, at the scene of the crumpled wreckage, said it was unclear what caused the crash, noting the jet had just been cleared for visual approach to the airport.
The Learjet Model 35 left Oakland County International Airport in Waterford, Mich., about 1 p.m. Tuesday, said J. David Vanderveen, who oversees the county’s three airports. Oakland County International Airport is about 25 miles northwest of Detroit.
Vanderveen said the jet was empty of cargo, but was to pick up freight at the Wheeling airport, located about 15 miles northwest of Chicago.
“There was a pilot and a co-pilot,” Vanderveen said. “Both were commercially rated, which means they were professional pilots. My understanding is they were clear to land and landed short, and crashed into the DesPlaines River.”
The jet, according to the FAA, was registered to the Waterford-based Royal Air Freight. A woman who answered the phone at the company declined to comment on the crash.
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