An arbitrator has ruled that city firefighters are entitled to out-of-title pay for shifts worked in which they took on the role of the department’s demoted captains. Daniel Daugherty, president of the Watertown Professional Fire Fighters Association Local 191, said arbitrator Richard Curreri ruled that the city will have to compensate firefighters who responded to calls while assuming the responsibilities of captains.
- PUB DATE: 8/27/2018 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Watertown Daily Times

Eight children were killed after a fire sparked in an apartment building in Chicago, fire officials said. The blaze ignited just before 4 a.m. on the second floor of a building on South Sacramento Avenue, according to Fire Commissioner Jose Santiago. The first call to authorities came when a woman who came home from work smelled the fire, he said.
- PUB DATE: 8/27/2018 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: ABC News

A Stockton fire crew had to act quickly after a man tried to take off with their fire engine early Saturday morning while they were fighting a fire. When engine 7 drove up to Jill Circle around 4:30 Saturday morning, fires were blazing at multiple spots on the street but another issue flared up as well.
- PUB DATE: 8/27/2018 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KTXL-TV Fox 40 Sacramento

There’s no guarantee that a different strategy would have resulted in a different outcome — that the victims would be alive today if something as mundane as an administrative spreadsheet had one more agency added. But in each of four fatal fires over the last 11 years, the structure of mutual aid calls for volunteer fire departments just beyond Peoria city limits has resulted in scenarios that appear to contradict the most basic tenets of firefighting.
- PUB DATE: 8/27/2018 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Peoria Journal Star

Fire officials are reminding people to observe closures in the area around the Miriam Fire after two hunters disrupted fire operations. Two men were seen in the closed area firing rifles in the direction of firefighters, stopping firefighting operations in the ski area and forcing the evacuation of firefighters, officials said Thursday.
- PUB DATE: 8/27/2018 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Yakima Herald