UPDATED Quick takes
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The building with the smoke coming out of it is the firehouse: That’s Oklahoma City Fire Station 6 yesterday afternoon burning on live TV. Click here for the video and details.
A closer look at the medical chopper industry: This morning’s Washington Post has an in depth look at the increasing number of fatal crashes by medical flights. Click here for the article by Gilbert M. Gaul and Mary Pat Flaherty. The paper has also put together a timeline showing the trend since 1980 and a look at the number of helicopters by state.
The Post also has interesting audio of an incident where two medical choppers were sent to the same call in South Carolina. Click here.
Thankfully this turned out not to be a statistic from the story above: Charleston, South Carolina firefighters were sent for a chopper crash on Wednesday. They found the crash scene. But the helicopter was only two-feet long. Here’s the story.
NEW Two-alarm townhouse fire in Maryland: Click here for details of a fire overnight in Montgomery County that left three firefighters with minor burns. Pictures are here.
NEW Pictures & video of church fire in Florida: Lightning is being blamed for a fire that destroyed a church in DeBary in Volusia County. It looks like someone snapped a picture of the roof in mid collapse. Click here for that and details. Watch raw video. Watch story.
Lightning does strike twice: Maybe not in the exact same spot, but in the same county, hitting two firefighters on separate calls. A series of house fires in Surrey County, North Carolina during thunderstorms Thursday night kept firefighters busy. At two of the house fires lightning struck near where firefighters were standing and sent the firefighters to the hospital for checkups. Read the story.
Interesting way to attract new members: The Mechanicstown Fire Department in New York has opened a mini-car track as a way to bring in new members. The department only has 30 active members compared to 75 in the 1980s. The track will also be open to the public. Check out the story.
Shake up in Dallas: This is the latest in a drama we had previously followed. Two top officials in the Dallas Fire Department suddenly departed this week. One of them has a sexual harassment and discrimination suit against the department. Click here for the story.
UPDATED Eastern Shore MCI: High school football players and their coaches started dropping Thursday afternoon possibly due to the heat. Hazmat crews were also checking to see if it could have been something else that sickened 14 people during practice at Kent Island High School. The victims were quarantined at the hospital. Click here to read the story. Click here to watch the story.
Picture this: So far, no one seems to think Dave is making too much of the picture of the first arriving unit to a California apartment fire. Check it out.
The search for an arsonist in Maryland: Montgomery County investigators want someone to identify a gasoline can with unique writing on it as part of the efforts to find whoever set a string of outside fires in the Damascus area. Click here for the update.
Bomb battle escalates: On Tuesday it was a series of bottle bombs at a home in the Hagerstown, Maryland area. On Wednesday a bomb with a little substance to it blew the door off a vehicle owned by one of the suspects in Tuesday’s incident. Click here.
NEW More cuts in New Bedford, MA: The city already closed two fire companies and now says they will layoff five firefighters by the first week of September. The mayor says he is forced to do this because the firefighters’ union won’t give up negotiated pay raises for 2010. The union called the mayor’s decision “premature”. Read the story from SouthCoastToday.com.
Philadelphia mayor has specifics in doomsday budget: Mayor Michael Nutter said on Thursday six fire companies and 200 firefighters could be history come October 1 if the state doesn’t let them increase the sales tax and make some pension fund changes. Click here for the stories.
DC scaffold rescue: Pictures as DC firefighters come to the rescue of a window washer whose scaffolding collapsed at floor number eight. Click here.
A deadly scaffold collapse in New York: The pictures are a little more dramatic and the ending wasn’t as happy after the collapse of scaffolding in Brooklyn. One of three men fell to his death and firefighters were able to get to the other two. Firegeezer has the story.
Let the
games begin: The 2009 National Aboriginal Firefighters Competitions apparently got started a little early. But what has been described as a drunken brawl began at the airport gate in Saskatoon for the team from the Black Lake Fire Department. The team never made it to Quebec. Firegeezer also has this one.
