Ryan O’Connor has spent more than a decade handling thousands of calls while working as a volunteer emergency medical technician with the Snyder Fire Department.
Most came evenings and overnights because O’Connor works full-time in the banking field.
The way he sees it, that service didn’t matter much to the state Bureau of Emergency Medical Services last spring, in the midst of a pandemic, after a miscommunication within the all-volunteer department caused O’Connor’s EMT recertification paperwork to be sent six days after his certification expired. - PUB DATE: 9/21/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Buffalo News
It’s been two years since WCCO first reported on the dangerous needle littering problem in parts of south Minneapolis.
At that time, Minneapolis firefighters planned to pick up the needles until the city found a better solution. But despite their efforts, the problem is arguably worse, says Assistant Minneapolis Fire Chief Melanie Rucker. - PUB DATE: 9/21/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WCCO-TV CBS 4 Minneapolis
A fire in an attic may not be the way most people start their day, but for rookie Tampa firefighter Lauren Glanton, it seems to come naturally.
"That was my alarm clock," she said. "It was fire time, time to rock and roll!" Answering the call runs in the family.
"Broken legs, gunshot wounds, overdoses and everything else," said Lauren’s dad, Larry, a Tampa Fire Rescue paramedic who has seen it all during his 24 years with the department. - PUB DATE: 9/21/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WTVT-TV FOX 13 Tampa
VIDEO/PHOTOS: A famed church in the Far South suburbs went up in flames Sunday afternoon.
Around 2 p.m., nearly a dozen fire departments responded to St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Beecher following reports of a massive blaze. Fire crews eventually extinguished the fire but the historic church was heavily damaged. - PUB DATE: 9/20/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WGN-TV 9 Chicago
Developed by the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA JPL), POINTER is groundbreaking new first responder tracking and location technology that allows first responders to pinpoint their colleagues more precisely in emergencies. - PUB DATE: 9/20/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WTTG-TV FOX 5 Washington, D.C.
With lessons learned from 9/11 so widely, recently and painfully recounted, the story of suffering and loss that continue for more than 100,000 fellow Americans must not be forgotten. We cannot lose sight of it as if seeing it through a rear-view mirror, fading in the distance. We need to keep these fellow citizens front and center. - PUB DATE: 9/20/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Eagle
VIDEO: The pandemic has put more burden on first responders answering emergency medical calls.
Dallas Fire-Rescue is hoping to cut down on burnout, response times and overtime with a new approach to staffing its ambulances. A new pilot program will run for six months. At first, DFR will use internal staff to determine if the model works. - PUB DATE: 9/20/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KDFW-TV FOX 4 Dallas
No clear culprit. No smoking gun. While COVID-19's origin story is currently defined by a lack of hard evidence and data, scientists around the world continue their search for answers to how the pandemic began. CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta speaks to leading virologists, epidemiologists and coronavirus researchers in "The Origins of COVID-19: Searching for the Source," premiering at 8 p. - PUB DATE: 9/20/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: CNN Health
PHOTOS: The looping and twisting cobalt blue rails of the Mr. Freeze: Reverse Blast loomed above the trees. The iconic siren of the ride occasionally blared through the warm September air as maintenance worked on the ride in the closed park. Below the steel supports, firefighters donned in orange and neon yellow wet suits, whitewater helmets and red personal flotation devices hung onto rescue boards through the class-four rapids of the Thunder River ride at Six Flags. - PUB DATE: 9/17/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Columbia Missourian
PHOTOS: Inside the garage of the firehouse, a 1956 pumper and ladder combination fire truck from Glasgow Volunteer Fire Department is the newest addition to the Fire Station 4 Airbnb on Rivermont Avenue.
The restored truck still runs but didn’t fit inside the Glasgow department so the Woodland family opened up his home to it recently. - PUB DATE: 9/17/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The News & Advance
For 150 years, the people of Lexington have called on the members of the Lexington Fire Dept. to come to their rescue in an emergency.
The brave men and women always run toward the danger to save lives. Their sacrifice doesn’t go unnoticed, and was formally recognized Thursday by the Lexington-Fayette County Urban County Government. - PUB DATE: 9/17/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WKYT-TV CBS/CW 27 Lexington
VIDEO: The McAllen Fire Department has added a new upgrade that's extending their capabilities and allowing them to rescue people more efficiently.
Fire Station 5 is home to the city of McAllen's newest fire truck.
The $1.6 million truck is equipped with new gear, including cameras, lights, and a 100-foot aerial platform, a feature their previous truck didn't have. - PUB DATE: 9/17/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KRGV-TV ABC 5 Weslaco
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recognized the New York National Guard on Saturday afternoon, 20 years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Hochul spoke at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, and announced that she signed three pieces of legislation to support 9/11 and communications for first responders. - PUB DATE: 9/17/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WHAM-TV ABC/CW 13 Rochester
VIDEO: Nearly two dozen families were forced from their homes early Thursday after a fire spread through a Northeast Dallas apartment building, firefighters say.
Dallas Fire-Rescue spokesman Jason Evans said firefighters were first called at 12:50 a.m. to the Oak Meadows Apartments located at 11050 Woodmeadow Parkway. - PUB DATE: 9/16/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KXAS-TV NBC 5 Fort Worth
A Los Angeles Fire Department captain severely burned in a May 2020 explosion inside a downtown L.A. warehouse has sued the owners of the building and a vaping supply shop housed there, accusing them of hazardous activity, premise liability and negligence.
Victor Aguirre and his wife, Claudia Aguirre, filed suit Wednesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court against property owner Steve Sungho Lee and his various companies along with the operators of Green Buddha and Smoke Tokes, a smoke and vape shop inside the East 3rd Street warehouse where the explosion occurred. - PUB DATE: 9/16/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KTLA-TV 5 CW Los Angeles
VIDEO: For the first time since their heroic act was caught on camera, Wichita firefighters spoke with KSN News about their Labor Day fire rescue at an area apartment complex.
Fireman Brian Doffing says apartment fires like this don’t always end with the best results for victims, but being able to rescue everyone made this one of the types of calls is exactly what makes their job worth it. - PUB DATE: 9/16/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KSNW-TV NBC 3 Wichita
General Motors is advising some Chevrolet Bolt owners to not park their electric cars within 50 feet of other vehicles to reduce the risk of a potential fire spreading to nearby cars and trucks.
The warning follows the Detroit automaker recalling more than 140,000 of the EVs produced since 2016 due to the risk of batteries spontaneously catching fire from “two rare manufacturing defects. - PUB DATE: 9/16/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: CNBC
The National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday that it was awarding nearly $470 million to New York University Langone Health for research into the long-term effects of COVID-19 to ramp up an unprecedented national effort to study so-called "long COVID."
The federal money will be divvied up by NYU to fund more than 100 researchers at institutions around the country, accelerating work to build a sweeping "meta-cohort" encompassing thousands COVID-19 survivors of various ages and backgrounds who are still experiencing symptoms more than a month after their initial infection. - PUB DATE: 9/16/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: CBS News
Firefighters say more than three dozen cars caught fire Wednesday morning at a south side business.
Crews used tanker trucks to bring water deep into the auto yard. Once the water supply was established, crews had the fire under control in about 40 minutes. Indianapolis Fire Department crews were dispatched around 1:45 a. - PUB DATE: 9/15/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WXIN-TV FOX 59 Indianapolis
It may sound surprising in an era characterized by increasingly destructive wildfires, but Stephen Jellie just spent the past year trying to get rid of firefighters.
Jellie is the fire chief and city manager of Ogdensburg, N.Y., a town on the Canadian border that’s small and getting smaller—10,064 lived there in April 2020, down from 12,375 in 1980. - PUB DATE: 9/15/2021 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: TIME - Metered Site
