VIDEO: A local teenager and pianist is paying his respects to those affected by the recent wildfires through a newly composed piece of music. Finding the right words to describe these last few days hasn’t been easy. Heartbreak and devastation, a community trying to process the unimaginable and neighbors showing up for neighbors. Gavin Stroup is using keys to express what he’s felt.

“I’m thinking it’s just such a weird time in our lives. It just seems so surreal like this is really happening,” said Stroup. The 14-year-old pianist is heading into his freshman year of high school, but this summer break is one he’ll always remember. “Things three months ago were just normal and now it’s just chaos kind of,” said Stroup.

Just a few months ago, Gavin and his family were in the middle of a Level 3 (Go Now!) evacuation zone. Their home survived the Upriver Fire, but those tense moments of leaving everything behind in a hurry are all he could think about as the Spokane Complex Fires destroyed hundreds of structures.

KREM-TV CBS 2 Spokane

The post Spokane teen honors first responders, wildfire victims through piano appeared first on Daily Dispatch.

The Oak Park Fire Department has partnered with the University of Illinois Fire Institute for a study to evaluate how the job affects firefighters’ health, with a focus on cancer screenings.

Participating firefighters will provide blood and urine samples and complete a baseline health questionnaire, an annual cancer survey and an exposure log form.

Participation in the study is voluntary and people can withdraw at any time throughout the study, which is planned to span up to 30 years.

They will also be asked to log their fire exposure after each study, which allows researchers to connect occupational exposures to health outcomes.

“We hope our participation not only benefits our own members through enhanced screening and early detection but also contributes to research that will improve firefighter safety across Illinois and beyond,” said JT Terry, Oak Park’s fire chief. “The study brings together scientific expertise and resources that individual fire departments simply cannot replicate on their own.”

The U of I study, which started in late 2024, currently has participation from over 100 fire departments in the state, according to Farzaneh Masoud, the director of research at the Illinois Fire Service Institute. A 40-foot-long mobile lab drives to pick up samples from different stations, she said.

Firefighters aged 18 and older, including retirees, emergency medical responders and people from all firefighting subgroups — whether volunteers or career and of any rank are able to participate in the study, program officials said.

“We look at the biomarkers of exposure and biomarkers of effect, how those exposures can affect their body, their metabolism or their muscles,” she said. “To annual sample collections, we follow them, we look at the gene toxicity, how these conditions are affected due to the accumulation of toxicants and carcinogens in their bodies and that’s the promise of this study.”

Firefighters have major health issues, Masoud said, and that the purpose of the study is to identify how the environments and conditions they’re exposed to affect their body, metabolism and muscles.

Health and safety is the highest priority for Oak Park’s fire department, Terry said, and its involvement in the study is part of both its physical and mental wellness initiative. Oak Park’s Fire Department currently staffs 79 sworn firefighters, paramedics and civilian personnel, Terry said.

“Ultimately, our goal is to protect the firefighters serving today while helping build a safer fire service for future generations,” he said. “If our participation helps researchers better understand occupational exposures, improve protective practices, and reduce cancer risk for firefighters everywhere, then it is an investment well worth making.”

Masoud said everybody a part of the Illinois Fire Service Institute is working to cover the “severely understudied population of heroes” to try to get ahead of a disease that has taken the lives of millions.

“They ultimately want to get ahead of cancer because it’s all about early detection,” Masoud said. “So if we can understand cancer better, get ahead of it, there’s going to be a lot of new knowledge that comes out of this research. We believe it will ultimately save lives, if not for this generation, then hopefully for the next.”

Chicago Tribune – Metered Site