An ambulance responding with lights and sirens rolled over near Elliott Hospital in Manchester Wednesday just before noon after colliding with another vehicle at an intersection.

The ambulance had two medics trapped inside the accident on Tarrytown Road. They were rescued through the windshield and taken to the hospital for evaluation. No patients were aboard the ambulance at the time, WMUR reports.

Shortly afterward, a police cruiser en route to that crash was involved in a separate collision at Valley and Jewett streets. The officer and two occupants of the other vehicle were transported to the hospital for treatment.

Later in the day, a Manchester fire truck was involved in a third crash with a car near the intersection of Merrimack and Chestnut streets.

All three incidents are currently under investigation.

Visit WMUR for more.

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The Crown Point (IN) Fire Department provides fire suppression, rescue, and emergency medical services (EMS) response to a suburban city of 40,000 residents from a single station staffed by 52 paid firefighter/paramedics running an engine, an aerial ladder, and three advanced life support (ALS) ambulances. The department has been a Pierce Manufacturing customer for more than 30 years, so when it needed to replace a 17-year-old Pierce pumper, it naturally turned again to Pierce for a new rig.

“We have been adding more staff, so we changed how our rigs were designed in terms of carrying equipment,” Mark Baumgardner Jr., Crown Point’s fire chief says. “With the advent of battery-powered hydraulic tools, there is no need for hydraulic reels and hoses and pumps, which opens up a lot of compartment space on an engine. We wanted a new rig with high compartments on both sides and coffin compartments on top to give us the maximum amount of storage space for equipment.”

Ken Sebo, Pierce’s pumper business development manager, says Pierce built a rescue-pumper for Crown Point on a Velocity® cab and chassis with seating for four firefighters, three of them in Pierce PS6 self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA) seats, powered by a 450-horsepower (hp) Cummins L9 engine and Allison 3000 EVS automatic transmission, with a TAK-4® independent front suspension and an air ride rear suspension.

Sebo says the Crown Point rescue-pumper has a Pierce PUC™ 1,500-gallon-per-minute (gpm) pump, a UPF Poly® 750-gallon water tank, a HAAS Alert collision avoidance system, and a Clearsky Intelligence™ Connectivity Solutions network. Wheelbase on the rig is 209 inches, overall length is 34 feet 6 inches, and overall height is 10 feet 10 inches.

Dave Polkow, apparatus sales representative for MacQueen Emergency Group, who sold the rescue-pumper to Crown Point, points out that the rig has two 200-foot crosslays of 1¾-inch hose, one 200-foot crosslay of 2½-inch hose, 200 feet of 2½-inch hose dead lay, and four slots for pike pole storage that are protected behind a roll-up door. The rig also has 150 feet of 1¾-inch hose in a compartment in the 22-inch extended front bumper, a Task Force Tips Crossfire deck gun, and a Hannay electric hose reel

Anne Arundel County Fire Department held a christening ceremony for its two new state-of-the-art 50-foot Defiant fire boats Tuesday, June 10, at Sandy Point State Park.

The milestone event marked the addition of these critical emergency response vessels to the department’s marine division, enhancing emergency operations on the waterways of Anne Arundel County.

The ceremony included remarks by County Executive Steuart Pittman and Fire Chief Trisha Wolford, followed by the unveiling of the names of both vessels, a toast to safe voyages, and finally, the christening for good luck.

The fire boats’ names were officially announced as Miss Avalon, operating out of Avalon Shores in southern Anne Arundel County, and Klas-y Lady, a take on the name of Chief Harry Klasmeier, the county’s first and longest serving fire chief, chesapeakebaymagazine.com reported. Klas-y Lady will work out of Cape St. Claire. Members of the public and the fire department had input on the vessels’ names.

The twin vessels, Metal Shark Defiant NXT Monohull Pilothouse fire boats, were made in Louisiana.

The water pumping volume is 8,500 gallons per minute, making them more powerful for knocking down flames on a boat, or at a marina or waterfront home, the report said.

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The Hitchins (KY) Volunteer Fire Department recently received a $5,000 grant through TC Energy’s Build Strong program, the department said in a Facebook post June 5, 2025.

The funding was used to purchase a new car hauler for their side-by-side vehicle, facilitating transportation for calls requiring the side-by-side. Additionally, the funds was used to purchase three brand new Kenwood portable radios enhancing communication abilities to help better serve their coverage area of Willard, Hitchins, and Denton.

“Thank you, TC Energy for being a steadfast supporter of first responders,” the post said. “Companies like yours play a vital role in maintaining public safety by awarding grants that enable the purchase of essential equipment.”

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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cites pallet rack collapses among the top 10 causes of warehouse accidents and estimates their cost at $36 billion annually in the United States.

This figure includes the cost of repairing or replacing damaged racks, inventory, and equipment as well as lost productivity, business interruption, legal claims, and reputational damage. Despite their rarity and underpublicized nature, these events are happening more frequently than most would believe.

Warehousing and distribution logistics markets are experiencing explosive and unprecedented growth. While recognizable titans of industry such as Amazon and Walmart lead the charge, there are a host of others that are filling the gaps of more specialized goods and regional markets to meet the ever-growing demand, with more coming online every day. This is just the tip of the iceberg in the evolving landscape of warehousing.

E-commerce is a primary driver behind this growth. Online order delivery times continue to shrink, bringing exponentially increased pressure inside the warehouse to move product faster than ever before. The challenges inherent in meeting this rising demand, along with production considerations and operational deadlines, create an environment where safety can be overlooked. Oversight regarding the structures that store these goods can be costly—and, in the event of a pallet rack collapse, deadly.

The hurried operational pace coupled with high turnover of well-trained employees means that damage to these structures is also increasing in both regularity and severity. The very moment a pallet rack sustains critical damage, a catastrophic collapse is a real possibility, with the damaged rack potentially being the first domino in a disaster that threatens the entire facility and the lives of workers in it. “Pallet rack collapse” videos are readily available online and offer a unique view into both the magnitude of damage and the speed with which it occurs. Once such a collapse is triggered, it cannot be stopped. It is over in seconds and, within that short timeline, goods are decimated; structures are destroyed; and, most importantly, rescue efforts have become uncommonly treacherous. The aftermath of such an event is at a scale and complexity that are hard to imagine, and the loss of life that often results from these crises is heart-wrenching and difficult to think about. Yet, the time has come that we simply must think about it in a productive and proactive way.

A pallet rack collapse event is unlike most other scenarios for which first responders routinely prepare. While structural collapse, hazmat threat, live utility, and rescue/recovery are all routinely part of first responder training, rarely are all of these components in the same scene at the same moment. Pallet rack collapse response demands that all of those emergency preparedness disciplines are employed, often simultaneously, and it takes weaving these skills together for true pallet rack collapse preparedness. The perils are real, the containment of the scene is formidable, and the decisions that need to be made are incredibly challenging. Thankfully, the first responder community is already well-versed in many of these areas and can thoughtfully navigate through these moments, hours, and days with skill and experience. Unfortunately, however, they are too often doing this from a “blindsided” posture, with no advance strategy, no preparedness, and no planning that could have otherwise helped them operate from a position of operational protocol.

Research with first responder audiences has made it uncomfortably clear that little to nothing is currently being done to prepare and properly equip them for the potential hazards they will face should they be called on to respond to a pallet rack collapse. No training. No standards. No protocols. No specialized equipment. Nothing. This