Firefighters say a blaze at a Tacoma home they are calling suspicious may have been caused by squatters. The fire near 36th Street and East Roosevelt Avenue was called out at about 2:42 a.m. Monday when neighbors called 911. At one point, flames were shooting through the home’s roof. No one was seen inside.
- PUB DATE: 5/8/2017 7:26:55 AM - SOURCE: KIRO-TV CBS 7

Emergency radio recordings show that helicopter pilots with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Orange County Fire Authority bickered, and that sheriff pilots ignored a direct order to “stand down,” during a pair of rescues in Laguna Beach and Orange on Saturday, April 29, revealing an escalating battle between the two agencies over helicopter-related emergencies and who responds to them.
- PUB DATE: 5/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Orange County Register

For the first time in the FDNY’s 150-year history, more women and black, Latino and Asian applicants have filed for the upcoming firefighter exam than white men. The latest numbers mark a significant change for the department — which has been the city’s least diverse agency for decades, despite also being one of its largest with 10,000 members.
- PUB DATE: 5/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: New York Daily News

Diana Matty joined West Palm Beach Fire Rescue fresh out of high school, in October 1994. She was 18. Work hard and someday you’ll be chief, they told her. “I took that to heart. I’ve been a hard worker all of my career,” Matty said. They made good on their promise Tuesday at 5 p.m. — on an interim basis, anyway — when City Administrator Jeff Green called to tell Asst.
- PUB DATE: 5/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Palm Beach Post

Two years before 36 partygoers died in the Ghost Ship warehouse inferno, Oakland firefighters toured the cluttered firetrap, even dancing in the same second-story performance space where the victims would huddle in their final moments, according to witnesses and documents. The visits started Sept. 26, 2014, a Friday, when firefighters extinguished a couch fire outside the warehouse artists’ collective on 31st Avenue before touring the eclectic interior, people who saw them inside the building said.
- PUB DATE: 5/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: East Bay Times