Investigators are working to determine what caused a fire that tore through a vacant home in Seattle's Cherry Hill neighborhood on Friday. Flames engulfed the home just before 1 a.m. in the 1100 block of 13th Avenue. Initially, firefighters had to fight the fire from the outside, but they were eventually able to get in and search the home to see if anyone was inside.
- PUB DATE: 9/9/2022 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KOMO-TV ABC 4 Seattle

Spokane Fire Department has determined the cause of this early morning house fire resulted from improperly discarded smoking materials that were left on the front porch. SFD says the people inside of the home were alerted to the fire when the front window broke due to the fire on the outside of the house.
- PUB DATE: 9/8/2022 5:00:00 PM - SOURCE: KHQ-TV NBC 6 Spokane

A community effort is underway in western Massachusetts to help the Hadley Fire Department grow its emergency response unit, WesternMassNews.com reported Wednesday.

The first step is getting a better ambulance, which it now has, thanks to community support, the report said.

A fire official said that whenever it received multiple calls at the same time, where the primary ambulance is out taking care of a call, the department then had to ask for mutual aid from Northampton, Amherst, South Hadley and South Deerfield.

But now Hadley has its own backup thanks to the Northampton Fire Department, which sold the truck to Hadley for about $20,000, according to the report. The backup truck is expected to be in action within the next couple of months, the report said.

Excessive wildfire smoke is being sent downwind from blazes burning in the Okanogan County wilderness as of Thursday. Authorities put the public on notice about compromised air quality early Thursday, particularly for Chelan County. According to real-time data put out by the air quality, fire and smoke map on the Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program website, unhealthy air induced by the smoke is being detected as far east as Quincy in Grant County.
- PUB DATE: 9/8/2022 2:52:00 PM - SOURCE: iFiber One News Radio

York (NE) has started the process toward building a new fire station, YorkNewsTimes.com reported Wednesday.

As part of the budget, city officials agreed to take $500,000 from the city’s reserves as the start of a “savings account” toward this large project, the report said.

City officials will start touring fire departments in other communities similar to York, where they too have a paid staff as well as volunteers. Some communities have built new stations in the past few years and those will be reviewed as a starting point when planning for the future, according to the report.

The current station was built in 1969. In April of 1968, a bond issue passed and a new fire/police complex was built for $188,000 at the corner of Eighth Street and Grant Avenue, the report said.