Four employees of the Billerica Fire Department have been handed lengthy suspensions and one demoted following a town investigation into a months-long sex scandal, first reported in April. "All employees involved have acknowledged violations of the rules and regulations of the department and have accepted the discipline that has been imposed by the town," said Town Manager John Curran, in a statement posted to the town's website Wednesday.
- PUB DATE: 6/22/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Republican

A poorly performing computer program at the Knox County E-911 Center is placing law enforcement officers and firefighters in danger by depriving them of updated information on emergency calls, authorities said Wednesday. The $6.2 million Intergraph Computer Aided Dispatch program went online two years ago and has been problematic ever since.
- PUB DATE: 6/22/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Knoxville News-Sentinel

The chief of the McDonald Volunteer Fire Department was killed in an explosion in West Virginia. Scott Albertini, died Tuesday morning at the Midland Resource Recovery plant in Barbour County, West Virginia. Two people were killed and one person was injured in an explosion at the same plant last month.
- PUB DATE: 6/21/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KDKA-TV CBS 2 Pittsburgh

Thirty-two members of the Chicago Fire Department’s brass resigned their exempt positions Monday and returned to rank-and-file status in a fight over pay and benefits that will cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. The bosses will return to their career service ranks of battalion chief and, in one case, paramedic field chief, but will continue to “act up” in their exempt positions.
- PUB DATE: 6/21/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times

The city of Houston is gearing up to play hardball with its firefighters union in advance of contract mediation by passing less favorable employment terms that would take effect if the firefighters' current agreement lapses next week. The changes subject to City Council approval Wednesday would come a month after the fire union declared an impasse in negotiations with the city.
- PUB DATE: 6/21/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Houston Chronicle

A Kansas City firefighter is awake from a coma after suffering a heat stroke, and doctors are trying to determine if energy drinks may have played a part in his condition. The Kansas City Fire Department says he was participating in a training exercise last Saturday, June 10, when he suffered a heat stroke.
- PUB DATE: 6/21/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KCTV-TV CBS 5

The Los Angeles Fire Department could soon seek federal permission to fly drones, a tool that officials say could help them track down missing hikers, gauge the risks in burning buildings and search confined spaces. A Los Angeles City Council committee voted Tuesday to allow the department to start seeking Federal Aviation Administration authorization to use “unmanned aerial systems,” despite objections from groups concerned about privacy rights.
- PUB DATE: 6/21/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Los Angeles Times

A firefighter is dead and another is badly injured following a wreck in Lafayette County, MO. This accident happened shortly after 6 p.m. on Monday evening. It happened on Highway E just north of Wheatley Road, which is north of Interstate 70 in Lafayette County. The area is just south of Mayview, MO.
- PUB DATE: 6/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KCTV-TV CBS 5 Kansas City

The Santa Paula City Council on Monday approved a resolution that, once finalized and in effect, effectively disbands its 114-year-old fire department. The tax-sharing agreement sets the terms for getting coverage from the larger Ventura County Fire Protection District. The district is paid for from property taxes, and Santa Paula will turn over 79 percent of what it gets once it joins, according to the agreement.
- PUB DATE: 6/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Ventura County Star

One of the seven U.S. sailors killed on the USS Fitzgerald after a collision with a container ship off the coast of Japan has been identified as Dakota Kyle Rigsby, a Fluvanna County volunteer firefighter. The U.S. Navy said Sunday night that 19-year-old Rigsby, a gunner’s mate seaman from Palmyra, was among the dead.
- PUB DATE: 6/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Lynchburg News & Advance

For the third time in less than a year, the City Council has rejected a contract settlement with district fire chiefs in a continuing dispute if the current chiefs should be required to live in Springfield. A motion to give final passage to the contract failed by way of a 6-6 tie vote, needing seven votes to pass.
- PUB DATE: 6/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Republican

Seven of them were huddled next to a couch on the second floor. Another was just 10 feet from the front door. Eight others were found together wrapped in a rug, apparently having fallen all at once when the floor under them collapsed. They, like all the other victims of the Ghost Ship warehouse fire, died of smoke inhalation, their lungs and airways clogged with soot.
- PUB DATE: 6/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: East Bay Times

The Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office is investigating the death Saturday of Fire Chief Abraham Pitre, said Perth Amboy Mayor Wilda Diaz in a statement early Sunday morning. Diaz called the 44-year-old Pitre's death "sudden" and that the "circumstances of the incident remain under investigation by the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
- PUB DATE: 6/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: MyCentralJersey.com

When Columbus officials rolled out a plan to cut the number of paramedics on trucks responding to medical emergencies, they said it would save on the city Division of Fire’s bulging overtime budget. Six months later, overtime in the division is on track to bust its budget for the sixth time in seven years and reach its highest level in years, but fire Chief Kevin O’Connor said the plan is working.
- PUB DATE: 6/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Columbus Dispatch

The park seems out of place, a flat swath of green grass and American flags tucked amid Savannah Highway's bustling corridor of strip malls, car dealerships and gas stations. Thousands of motorists flood past each day navigating the snarl of congestion that defines this stretch of road. As they hurry by, the spot where dozens of men once waged the battle of their lives becomes a mere flash of scenery on a suburban landscape.
- PUB DATE: 6/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Charleston Post and Courier

Dany Cotton is used to receiving bad news in the small hours. As commissioner of the London fire brigade, she is one of three senior officers on the brigade’s rota who will answer a call alerting them to a major incident. Last Tuesday night it was Cotton’s turn on rota. She was six months into her job running the country’s largest fire service and had almost three decades as a firefighter under her belt.
- PUB DATE: 6/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Guardian

Two firefighters assigned to the city’s fire department heavy rescue truck are sent out several times a day on all kinds of calls, from helping out senior citizens injured in falls to victims suffering from heart attacks or are involved in a serious motor vehicle crashes. But the rescue truck soon won’t be going out on quite so many calls.
- PUB DATE: 6/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Watertown Daily Times

In the 10 years since Charleston lost nine firefighters in the June 18, 2007, Sofa Super Store fire, the department has seen significant changes from the ground up and members say they are proud of the progress. Following the tragic fire, investigations conducted by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) and an independent review panel led by Gordon Routley—who wrote the Routley Report, laid the framework for changes that the department needed to consider.
- PUB DATE: 6/16/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Firehouse

The branch of the Houston Fire Department responsible for ensuring building safety keeps inadequate records, does not examine buildings on a regular schedule and inflated its inspection numbers, all while blowing past its overtime budget, according to an audit released by the city controller's office Thursday.
- PUB DATE: 6/16/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Houston Chronicle

The government’s building safety experts warned last year that the drive for greater energy efficiency meant more and more buildings are being wrapped in materials that could go up in flames. In a report compiled before the Grenfell Tower disaster on Wednesday, the Building Research Establishment, which works for the Department of Communities and Local Government on fire investigations, said attempts to innovate with insulation were leading to an “increase in the volume of potentially combustible materials being applied” to buildings.
- PUB DATE: 6/16/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: The Guardian