PHOTO - A driver's education student taking her final test behind the wheel of a car plowed through the front of the driver instruction school building Friday morning in Bellevue, police said. No one was injured, but the student failed the test. Officers responded to the scene, in the 14100 block of NE 20th Street in Bellevue, at about 8:30 a.
- PUB DATE: 10/16/2015 8:33:29 AM - SOURCE: KOMO-TV ABC 4 and Radio 1000

PHOTO - A violent collision between a van and a Prince George's County fire engine critically injured a driver and closed the Inner Loop of the Capital Beltway for several hours. A work van rammed into the back of a Ritchie Volunteer Fire Department engine at the scene of an earlier crash on southbound I-495 at Ritchie Marlboro Road around 11:00 Thursday night, according to tweets from Mark Brady, spokesman for the Prince George's County Fire Department.
- PUB DATE: 10/16/2015 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WUSA-TV 9 DC

Branford Deputy Chief Ronald R. Mullen died last night when he walked onto an Amtrak railroad track and was struck by an oncoming Shoreline East passenger train near Pleasant Point Road in Pine Orchard. Mullen, who was 55, served with the Branford Fire Department for nearly four decades and was considered one of the best arson investigators in the state.
- PUB DATE: 10/16/2015 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: new haven independent

California's corrections chief is defending the state's use of inmates with violent pasts to fight drought-fueled wildfires, while promising to mend relations with critics who fear the prisoners create a public safety danger. "This is not the time to do any retrenching with the fires we've been having — and there's no need to do any retrenching because there haven't been any problems," Corrections Secretary Jeffrey Beard said.
- PUB DATE: 10/16/2015 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: abc news

A recent column published in the Washington Post suggested that because overall losses from fires have gone down in recent years, career firefighters are therefore largely irrelevant and their ranks could be diminished or replaced by part-time or volunteer workers. The column went on to describe firefighting as mostly about "eating and sleeping, mopping floors, lifting weights, grocery shopping.
- PUB DATE: 10/16/2015 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: firerescue1