American Medical Response, the Colorado-headquartered ambulance business of Envision Healthcare Corp., will be sold to New York buyout firm KKR & Co. LP in an all-cash deal worth $2.4 billion, Envision said today. KKR plans to combine Greenwood Village-based AMR with its Texas-based portfolio company, Air Medical Group Holdings (AMGH).
- PUB DATE: 8/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Denver Business Journal

Tensions between Fayetteville City Councilman Chalmers McDougald and the city fire chief flared Monday night in a council work session when Ben Major appeared to update council members on progress to increase firefighter diversity in his department. “It seems as though this department is really not willing to reach people,” McDougald said.
- PUB DATE: 8/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Fayetteville Observer

At 10 a.m. on Monday, South Zanesville Fire Chief Russell Taylor met with engineers at the Owens-Illinois glass plant on State Street to discuss the possibility of a tank rupture. A few hours later, the bottom of a tank ruptured. "Basically like a volcano," Taylor said. Three hundred thousand tons of molten glass spilled into the facility, he said.
- PUB DATE: 8/8/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Cincinnati Enquirer & Cincinnati.com

Oklahoma City's former fire chief has been sworn in as United States Fire Administrator. Keith Bryant was sworn in August 4 in the special ceremony at the Oklahoma City National Memorial by Federal Judge Timothy DeGiusti. Bryant will be responsible for leading fire and EMS services on the national level under the Trump administration.
- PUB DATE: 8/7/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KOKH-TV FOX25

Twelve people, including one firefighter, were injured Sunday morning after a flammable liquid leaked from a shipping container in the Port of Long Beach, officials said. The spill of the unidentified chemical from the 6,000-gallon container was reported shortly before 9:30 a.m., a spokesperson for the Long Beach Fire Department said.
- PUB DATE: 8/7/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: abclocal.go

A city firefighter who resigned after hanging up on a 911 caller attempting to save a wounded friend has filed a lawsuit alleging he was terminated days into a new job with the Bernalillo County Fire Department when a commissioner expressed concern over his hiring. Matthew Sanchez was a 10-year veteran of the Albuquerque Fire Department when he fielded a call June 26, 2015, from a frantic teenage girl attempting to render aid to Jaydon Chavez-Silver.
- PUB DATE: 8/7/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Albuquerque Journal

For 3 1/2 hours on July 18, when somebody called 911 in Cincinnati, they couldn't reach a dispatcher. Police, firefighters and paramedics don't know how many people needed help but didn't get it. It was the worst failure in years for the city's 911 emergency system. But it wasn't the only one. Since the middle of 2016, the system that residents count on to get help quickly for life and death emergencies has suffered a series of blackouts and breakdowns.
- PUB DATE: 8/7/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Cincinnati Enquirer & Cincinnati.com

Firefighters are always looking out for each other, even if they haven’t answered an alarm in more than three decades. A 90-year-old retired FDNY firefighter who had been missing for 36 hours was safely returned home early Saturday after a keen-eyed smoke eater — 63-years his junior — saw him wandering down a Bronx street.
- PUB DATE: 8/7/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: New York Daily News

Firefighters and national chemical safety groups are praising Maine's new law banning flame retardants in furniture. Maine lawmakers this week overrode Republican Gov. Paul LePage's veto of a law that supporters said would reduce firefighters' exposure to carcinogens. Starting in 2019, a person can't sell upholstered furniture whose materials contain more than one percent of a flame-retardant chemical.
- PUB DATE: 8/7/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: MainePublic.org

Houston firefighters are accusing Mayor Sylvester Turner of standing between them and a voter-approved pay raise by failing to ensure a petition they submitted last month is certified in time to appear on the November ballot. Turner rejected any suggestion that he has involved himself in the City Secretary's effort to verify their petition, and his office on Thursday said an offer by the fire union to cover any staffing costs needed to count their signatures is being examined as a possible attempt to improperly influence a public official.
- PUB DATE: 8/4/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Houston Chronicle

The turf war is back on between the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and the Orange County Fire Authority over whose helicopters should respond to rescue calls. A proposed agreement in which both agencies would share rescue calls was pulled from next week’s Board of Supervisors agenda because of opposition from fire officials and city council members in Santa Ana, Tustin and Yorba Linda.
- PUB DATE: 8/4/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Orange County Register

PHOTO - Sometimes, when a tree falls in the woods, someone is there to see it. In the case of a Richmond volunteer firefighter, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Fortunately, the 45-year-old Richmond resident, a 13-year veteran of the department, escaped serious injury after a large branch suddenly broke off of a tree along the north side of Division Road at about 7:30 p.
- PUB DATE: 8/4/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Voice

Former Kinloch Mayor Darren Small, 51, and his wife, Jayna Small, 40, have pleaded guilty to a federal charge and admitted stealing money from the city’s fire protection district, the U.S. attorney’s office said Thursday. Darren Small pleaded guilty Thursday to two felony counts: conspiracy to commit access device fraud and access device fraud.
- PUB DATE: 8/4/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A fire department participated in a viral trend that involves getting out of your vehicle to attempt a slam dunk in a basketball hoop and driving away. Arlington Fire Department tweeted a video of one of their crewmembers wearing a T-Rex costume and attempting to slam dunk at a neighborhood basketball hoop as part of the #DriveByDunkChallenge.
- PUB DATE: 8/4/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: FireRescue1

A Silsbee volunteer firefighter was killed Wednesday after being struck by a car while working a traffic accident. 12News has been asked to withhold the name of the firefighter until all family members have been notified. The firefighter was struck while working an accident along FM418 just east of Highway 92 according to Hardin County Sheriff Mark Davis.
- PUB DATE: 8/3/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KBMT-TV ABC 12

A firefighter was killed while working the Lolo Peak fire Wednesday afternoon — the second firefighter death in Montana this fire season. Missoula County Sheriff T.J. McDermott said an official investigation to determine the cause of death is still underway. Dispatchers at the Lolo Peak fire said the man was given CPR after apparently being struck by a falling snag.
- PUB DATE: 8/3/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Missoula Missoulian

Authorities pulled a second body from the rubble Wednesday night, after a building exploded and collapsed at Minnehaha Academy earlier in the day. At just before 10 p.m., Fire Chief John Fruetel announced that searchers had been able to locate and remove the body of the missing male victim, who had been identified by the school as 81-year-old school custodian John Carlson, at about 8 p.
- PUB DATE: 8/3/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KARE-TV NBC 11

A D.C. firefighter was critically injured after he was struck by another fire department vehicle late Wednesday night. The accident happened as firefighters were responding to a rowhouse fire on the 800 block of F Street NE at 11:30 p.m. Fire officials say 28-year-old Dane Smothers Jr. was preparing hose lines and other equipment when he was struck by a ladder truck arriving at the scene.
- PUB DATE: 8/3/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: NBC Washington

The Orange County Fire Rescue Department is attempting to reduce response times with a new GPS technology that uses locations of its vehicles to dispatch firefightersThe department started using Automatic Vehicle Location for dispatch in June to make its operations more efficient, Fire Rescue Chief Otto Drozd III said.
- PUB DATE: 8/3/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Orlando Sentinel

The St. Paul fire chief recently suspended a captain for five days, saying he “engaged in fraudulent and deceptive conduct related to requests and use of sick leave with pay.” The city said Mike Hamburger’s use of sick time cost it $14,000. The figure doesn’t include the cost of having firefighters fill the open posts, which is frequently at overtime rates.
- PUB DATE: 8/3/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: St. Paul Pioneer Press - Twin Cities.com