According to Pasco Fire officials, the blaze that consumed a home at 1753 North 22nd continues to be investigated, but it’s mysterious that it “rekindled” according to fire officials. The new blaze started late Thursday night. Earlier in the day, the fire was reported at the home, three people were able to get out, and are now being helped by the Red Cross.
- PUB DATE: 8/11/2017 11:11:30 AM - SOURCE: KEYW-FM 98.3

A 15-year-old boy who died Thursday night while swimming in the Columbia River may have been shocked by electricity after climbing onto a fence near a pump house in Pasco. The boy’s friends called for help about 8:30 p.m. after he didn’t resurface. By the time Pasco firefighters reached him using a rescue boat, he’d been underwater 20-plus minutes.
- PUB DATE: 8/11/2017 8:36:28 AM - SOURCE: Mid-Columbia Tri-City Herald

Groves has made a design change to its SCBA Mobile Bottle Carts. Effective immediately the products MBR-16, MBR-24, MBR-28, MBR-36 and MBR-42 will be replaced by part numbers VBR-16, VBR-24, VBR-28, VBR-36 and the VBR-42.

The change covers how bottles are stored on shelves. Groves has done away with the divider system and moved toward a more consistent V-shaped shelf design. By doing this the company has eased and shortened the time needed for assembly while making the process of loading the bottles into the cart more efficient. A result of using the V-shaped shelves was a change in overall sizing. The depth and the height of the units remains the same, however the width of the VBR-36 and the VBR-42 has gone from 48” to 54”.

• VBR-16: Holds 16 bottles; 4 Shelves | 36” x 24” x 40” | 64 lbs.
• VBR-24: Holds 24 bottles; 6 Shelves | 36” x 24” x 61” | 90 lbs.
• VBR-28: Holds 28 bottles; 7 Shelves | 36” x 24” x 71.5” | 106 lbs.
• VBR-36: Holds 36 bottles; 6 Shelves | 54” x 24” x 61” | 121 lbs.
• VBR-42: Holds 42 bottles; 7 Shelves | 54” x 24” x 71.5” | 140 lbs.

For more information, visit www.readyrack.com.

Orange County’s (CA) Fire and Rescue team is getting high-tech assistance. A new station alert system has only been online for a few months but already first responders say it is getting results.

Think Google maps with station-specific rescue alerts delivered on everything from first responders’ smart phones to fire-rescue mobile data computers and you have Orange County Fire’s new station alerting system.

“If 10 calls come in, we can distribute all 10 at the same time,” Chief Otto Drozd told WKMG-TV News 6. Drozd is behind the county’s high-tech response revolution just introduced this past May. “Today we are much more efficient than we were just a few months ago,” Drozd said.

Orange County Fire and Rescue averages 119,000 emergency calls every year, and Drozd and his team tell News 6 efficiency and speed is the number one priority. “There is no doubt I know where the call is going when I get the proper address,” said Lt. Robert Izzo who has served with Orange County Fire Rescue for 19 years. “We can actually get a pre-alert on the system so we know even before we walk out the door to the truck where we are going.”

The county’s fire-rescue teams will be integrating faster arrival times with drones and thermal imaging, combining Intel from coal to rescue. “This is really melding all those data bases we have with modern technology in order to get the information to the people who need it in the most timely fashion.” Drozd said.

Preliminary data for the station alert system shows that response times are cut as much as a minute per incident.

Orange County Fire Rescue is one of the first departments to use the technology but more than 385 cities worldwide use similar technologies serving roughly 24 million people.

For more information, visit www.stationalerting.com.