A local boy is miraculously alive after a car crash sent him to the hospital on Monday night. Riggin Bliss, 17, was on his way home from his summer job when officials say an oncoming driver hit him head-on. Bliss is a volunteer firefighter with Cowlitz-Skamania Fire District 7. His own colleagues, including his brother and the fire chief, responded to the call to help him.

“I’ve got a duty to act. I have to help no matter what the situation is going on,” said Bliss’s brother Charlie Silvis, 19. Silvis, along with Fire Chief Nick Huesties, responded to the crash about a mile away from their station on Lewis River Road in Ariel, Washington. ‘It’s very hard when you get a call for a car crash and when you’re rolling up, you see a car that you recognize,” Huesties said.

The two fire officials found that Bliss was trapped in his red truck. “I just started freaking out,” Silvis said. “I tried to keep my composure.” Washington State Patrol says a vehicle driving north towards the interstate and crossed the center line and hit Bliss’s car heading south. Police say the driver, 76-year-old John Jessup, may have been impaired and has been charged with vehicular assault.

Huesties says he’s responded to many crashes on the road. “The chances of being in a car crash, if you live up here your whole life, is pretty high,” he said. Bliss is on the mend, although his recovery will be a long one. Huesties says he has a broken femur, tibia, hip and a bruised carotid and he also bruised his chest.

KOIN-TV CBS 6 Portland

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VIDEO: The Vincennes Fire Department has received a new set of wheels, or rather a restored set of wheels, as the department temporarily has a fully restored 1926 fire truck that the department used to own at their headquarters for people to see.

For one member of the fire department, Larry Howerton, a retired firefighter and the current chaplain for the department, seeing this restored truck means more as he used to see this same truck when he was on the department back in the 1960s.

“I slept in the same building with it for a few years and have operated it before,” Howerton said. “Not on a working fire, only to test the pump or test the hose in that capacity.”

Howerton was blown away when he saw the same truck he saw every day restored to its former glory.

“It’s a beautiful piece of equipment,” Howerton said. “It looks a whole lot different than it had when it left here many years ago.”

The wheels were set in motion on this project last year when Jeff Latta, training division chief for the Vincennes Fire Department, did some research on the history of the department and found this 100-year-old truck sitting in California.

WTWO-TV NBC 2 Terre Haute

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VIDEO: Inside the hangar at the Mission Fire Department’s headquarters sits a bright red gleaming unit that’s the newest — and smallest — addition to its fleet.

It’s a utility remote terrain vehicle, or UTV, that was paid for by a special grant from the governor’s office just for fire departments that are on or near the Texas-Mexico border.

Mission Fire Chief Michael Silva says it will come in handy fighting fires and for searches and rescues in the rugged South Texas border terrain.

“They’re all 4-wheel drive but it allows us to go on uneven terrain where our fire trucks and our ambulances cannot go,” Silva told Border Report on Tuesday as he showed off the unit.

It’s similar to an ATV, but UTVs have regular vehicle transmission, not motorcycle handles, and can hold multiple people.

This one seats four and has a special canopy rack that can be pulled down to keep victims and firefighters cool in the blazing South Texas heat. It also has souped up flood and scene lights, and a massive suspension system.

KVEO-TV NBC/CBS 23 Brownsville

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A house fire on Five Mile Prairie started in a dryer on Wednesday morning and was extinguished quickly, according to Spokane Fire Department firefighters at the scene. They said the fire was reported around 5:30 a.m., the department said. A mother living at the house noticed the fire first, coming from the dryer, firefighters said. Then she woke up her two kids and got them safely out of the house. Firefighters arrived and extinguished the fire within 15 minutes, they said.No one was hurt in the fire and the flames did not spread beyond the dryer.

KHQ-TV NBC 6 Spokane

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Hialeah Heights leaders will move ahead with a $43.6 million city hall expansion that does not include a facility for the police and fire departments.

The post Hialeah Heights (FL) Ditches Plan to Replace Temporary Fire Station appeared first on Fire Apparatus: Fire trucks, fire engines, emergency vehicles, and firefighting equipment.