Jose Robles said he was abruptly awakened at 2:30 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 16, by his wife telling him the Bellingham Fire Department was at their door. Their taco truck, Tacos El Tule, was on fire. Robles said it was sheer confusion and commotion when he went outside, and for about 30 seconds, he thought he was just having a nightmare.
- PUB DATE: 8/22/2019 8:04:38 AM - SOURCE: Bellingham Herald

Lieutenant Steven Lawrence, PIO for St. Petersburg Fire Rescue has announced that the department has received three new specialty fire apparatus.

“We have put our ‘new’ high-water/brush truck into service,” he says. “It will be housed at Station 7 and be called Brush 7. The vehicle was bought from the state and fully refurbished to meet our needs, and it has the capability to move 15-20 people and access flooded areas within our city. It’s a 1995 Stewart & Stevenson Standard Cargo truck LMTV, 4×4 with a fully automatic transmission.

“Hazmat Utility 5 was delivered to Station 5. This new utility truck was built on a Ford F-550 chassis with the body and center console custom built by E-ONE in Ocala. Hazmat Utility will respond to the majority of hazmat incidents within St Petersburg. This truck will be able to rapidly respond to incidents throughout St Petersburg and neighboring areas.”

Lawrence continues, “Station 4 welcomed their new heavy rescue. The heavy rescue will support the Technical Rescue Team(TRT) and is able to respond to any technical rescue call within Pinellas County, Florida.”

City firefighters will be paid nearly $1 million in back pay connected to the five-year contract dispute with the city. City Comptroller James E. Mills said Wednesday that the payout for the retro pay and health benefit deductions will be “just a couple of thousand dollars short of $1 million.” The payouts — scheduled to go out on Aug.
- PUB DATE: 8/22/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Watertown Daily Times

“We have a duty to those who put their lives on the line daily,” states southeastchaplaincy.com, a newly formed service and website being stewarded by local Firefighter Chaplain Cole Massey to support first responders in Southeast Washington. “It is our desire to meet every call or need as it arises.
- PUB DATE: 8/22/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Walla Walla Union-Bulletin - Metered Site

When Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago, it took hours for a single message from Pompeii to reach rescuers 18 miles away. Today we have the opposite problem during disasters: too much rapid information from many sources, with consequences just as fatal for some people. Engineers at the University of California, Riverside are working to change this with a tool that searches real-time text, photo and video from social media and surveillance cameras alongside data from sensors, like fire detectors and security alarms.
- PUB DATE: 8/22/2019 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: UC Riverside News