More monitoring and manpower is needed for Harris County to better respond to chemical fires like the three that struck the region earlier this year, worrying residents and shutting the Houston Ship Channel, according to a study evaluating the county’s response to the fires. The most critical response gap identified involved staffing in the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office, where another 16 hazardous materials technicians —at a cost of $1.
- PUB DATE: 7/30/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Houston Chronicle

Firefighters are tackling three blazes in central Washington near Yakima and forecasts show conditions to fight them are going to get worse. The Pipeline Fire and Left Hand Fire are both between Yakima and Ellensburg. The Kusshi Creek Fire is south near the Yakama Reservation. The Left Hand Fire has forced six homes to evacuate and hundreds more are on notice.
- PUB DATE: 7/29/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KCPQ-TV FOX 13 Seattle

Fires that start in Los Angeles' homeless encampments pose a serious safety threat because they often spread to nearby apartments, homes, businesses and other buildings. The map above, illustrating fires that started at homeless encampments in 2018, shows just how widespread the problem is in Los Angeles County.
- PUB DATE: 7/29/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KNBC-TV NBC 4 Los Angeles

PHOTOS: Flying Apache attack helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan prepared Tim Cherwin for his current job. The foe might be different but sometimes it's just as dangerous battling forest fires in a twin-engine turboprop plane. War zones and forest fires in the western United States — which Cherwin has fought from the air for the past five years — offer similar challenges: mountainous terrain, low altitude flying, extreme heat, rapidly changing weather conditions and endangered lives.
- PUB DATE: 7/29/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

It was a monster of a fire that threatened a number of nearby structures and endangered the lives of scores of firefighters when flames consumed the R.S. Fought and Sons Feed Mill at Walnut and Railroad streets forty years ago. “The flames were going a hundred feet into the air,” Gene Cahn remembered during a recent interview at the borough’s firehouse.
- PUB DATE: 7/29/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Williamsport Sun-Gazette