YANKTON, SOUTH DAKOTA, FIREFIGHTERS WERE FACED WITH A FOWL CHALLENGE on Sunday.

They were called to a house after a boy saw a young duck fall into a neighbor’s chimney.  Removing the plucky ducky proved to be no easy task, though.  The chimney had two elbows in it and the FF’s had to dismantle it before they could grab the quacker and clear the passage.

Assistant Fire Chief Larry Nickles admits the operation was a bit humorous, but said it could have led to a real problem for the home’s occupants.

“If the chimney had gone straight down to the furnace, there could have been a fire,” he said. “And if no one had seen the duck fall in and it wasn’t discovered right away, it could have caused carbon monoxide to build up in the house.” 

The Yankton Press & Dakotan has the STORY.
Yankton Fire Dept. WEBSITE.

YFD Engine 1

ARE YOU LIVING IN ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST SINFUL CITIES?  Or maybe you just wish that you did.

Forbes.com has listed the traditional seven deadly sins (lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, wrath, envy and pride) and listed the 10 worst (best?) cities in each category.  Rankings were determined by extrapolating appropriate statistics in each category.

For example:  ENVY was ranked by the cities with the highest property crime rate.  The article has an interactive map where you click on whatever sin you want to view and the map shows the ten top towns with their ranking.

Check it out HERE.

 Updated, 4 pm

AN EXPLOSION AND FIRE IN EL MONTE, CALIFORNIA, has been attributed to a thief who was trying to steal some copper wiring.

The Associated Press reports:

Los Angeles fire Inspector Frank Garrido says crews responded to a reported explosion Monday morning and found a large, one-story commercial building on fire. They put out the blaze in about 15 minutes.

Garrido says crews found the unidentified victim’s body by an electrical vault and believe he was involved in an attempt to steal copper wire.

He did not know if the victim was electrocuted, or if he died from the explosion and fire.

Update:  The Los Angeles Times has a few new details released from the police:

Firefighters discovered the man’s body after they responded to reports of smoke at 12114 East Garvey Ave. shortly after 6:15 a.m. They extinguished the fire within about 15 minutes and then found the dead man in a small room containing an electrical panel that appeared to have been tampered with, said Los Angeles fire Inspector Frank Garrido.  The man was not carrying identification, Garrido said, and had not been identified this morning.

“It appeared that he was tampering with the electrical wire and something set off a spark which created a fire,” said El Monte Police Lt. Dan Burlingham.  He also said it was possible that the man had been electrocuted before the fire started.

El Monte police have investigated several recent incidents of copper wire thefts in the area, Garrido said. But he said the Fire Department has not seen any recent fires related to copper wire thefts.

THERE IS A BREAKTHROUGH DEVELOPMENT in the automotive tire industry.  The designer is calling it the Self Inflating Tire, or SIT.

There is a small air chamber built into the bead of the sidewall that receives atmospheric air and uses the weight of the car to compress the chamber and force the air into the tire itself.  After the tire is repressurized to its normal level, a check valve closes and leaves the air pressure at its nominal setting.

Since almost all tires will gradually lose some pressure over time, this design will maintain the correct amount with the resulting savings on lower fuel costs and especially the preservation of the designed life-span of the tire that can be shortened measurably by under-inflation.

CODA Development’s SIT website explains more fully how the system works and they also have an informative 2-minute video that shows a graphic display of the operation HERE.

Firegeezer says:  If this turns out to be as good as it looks, then I would expect all passenger cars to be equipped with this tire within the next 8 - 10 years, joining the Forever Battery in the march to the maintenance-free car.

THE PROPANE-FED FIRE THAT HAS BEEN BURNING in the collapsed apartment building in Aalesund, Norway, has burned itself out after 5 days.

The event began when a landslide knocked the 6-story apartment building off its foundations, destroying the two lower floors of the building.  (See Firegeezer reports HERE, HERE, and HERE.)  Five residents are still unaccounted for and are believed to be dead inside the building rubble.

ODD/Mehus photo

Rescuers were prevented from entering the building to look for them because of the propane fire and the instability of the structure.  Now that the fire is out, there are hopes that engineers can evaluate the integrity of the building so that rescuers can start searching.  However, the fire officials are still concerned about the possibility of pockets of propane remaining in area underneath.

Queen Sonja was in Aalesund on Saturday to attend a memorial service for the victims and meet with survivors and rescue crews.

Aftenposten has this latest REPORT.

OTTAWA, ONTARIO, IS THE LATEST ENTRY to a long list of cities that is facing daily ambulance shortages because of hospitals’ inability to receive patients in a timely manner.

Firegeezer has been reporting periodically of the situation in many cities, not just in the U. S. and Canada, but in UK and Australia as well, where emergency ambulances are being held out of service because of delays at hospitals.

Ottawa operates a fleet of 40 ambulances, but this past Friday morning only one of them was available to answer a call anywhere in the capital city.  All the others were either already on a call or, in most cases, waiting at a hospital for a patient to be admitted.

The Ottawa Citizen reports:

A Citizen freedom of information request generated log information that shows between December and February, there were at least 42 instances when Ottawa’s paramedic service was at Level 0, which means there weren’t any ambulances available.

The chief of the city’s paramedic service says the problem of hospital waits has been steadily worsening. Now , it often ties up paramedics for as long as two hours, when it should just take 20 minutes. On average, about a third of the city’s paramedic crews are tied up at hospitals trying to off-load patients.

He notes that Ottawa is just one of many Canadian cities that are going through this alarming overflow of patients at hospitals. “It’s backing up on to the street. We have to find solutions.”

Read the full story HERE.

A MASSIVE FIRE THIS MORNING IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, has completely destroyed the Swadling’s Timber and Hardware shop in the city’s South Side.

Sydney Morning Herald

When the open-up man arrived at 6:30 am Monday, he heard noises on the ceiling overhead that sounded like an intruder was running around.  When he looked up he saw a thin layer of smoke on the ceiling and immediately called the fire brigade.

When the firefighters arrived the made an initial entry to start an attack on the fire area but were almost immediately met with a flashover that drove them out of the building.  The fire then spread rapidly throughout the building and defensive tactic were deployed.

SMH

As the fire grew, it was fed by hundreds of chemical containers, LPG tanks, pool chemicals and racks of lumber.  By 9 am the walls of the structure were starting to sag.  The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

A Fire Brigades spokesman said engineers were en route to the fire scene to determine which walls could be removed to give fire fighters better access to the blaze.

“We are going to discuss the best way to demolish part of the building to get to these pockets which are still burning,” the spokesman said.

“The whole building will have to be demolished anyway, so we hope this will give us better access to put the fire out quicker.”

The spokesman said there was no chance of other buildings catching alight but a wall at the rear of the warehouse on Jones Lane appeared to be in danger of collapsing.

“If it collapses in then there will be no problem but if it collapses out, the buildings on the other side of the lane might get some superficial damage,” he said.

 
SMH

There are 20 fire companies with 100 firefighters plus a haz-mat team on the scene.

Read more from the Morning Herald HERE.
The News has MORE plus a VIDEO.

Wow…..here it is, the end of the month already.  And I haven’t even filled out my month-end checks yet.  Where did the days go?  We’ve been through a St. Patrick’s Day, an early Easter, and the advanced start of Daylight Savings Time.

Shouldn’t we be getting an extra paycheck after all that?

A different kind of “close call” event took place yesterday.  A hot fire on the Ocean City, Maryland, boardwalk broke out in the morning.  If you folks that are inland have never been to a seaside town with a boardwalk and commercial strip, then you can’t imagine the potential for disaster that awaits a flame.  Massive wood structures, confined exposures, limited access, etc.

Photo by Chuck Snyder

If one of those babys gets away from you, it can literally devastate a community’s economy.  But the guys in O.C. put a terrific stop on yesterday’s blaze.  From looking at the pictures, I’d say it was magnicent.  Dave Statter at STATter911 was sticking with the story all day and he has a full collection of photos, videos and links.  Take a few minutes and check them out and see if you agree with me.  They’re on his website HERE.

I’ve got a bunch of things to sort out and then report back to you today.  But I need to get some more coffee first.

Let’s get the equipment checked out, then I’ll start in on the “fun stuff.”

Updated, scroll down. 

A CESSNA CITATION JET AIRCRAFT CRASHED INTO A HOUSE in the Southeast corner of England at 2:30 Sunday afternoon.

BBC

The plane was carrying two the pilot and three four passengers and went into a dive after the pilot had called in a Mayday to the nearby airfield’s control tower.

Another pilot who was approaching the runway on his landing when the event happened told the BBC:

“I was about thirty seconds from touchdown and I heard a mayday call.

“(The pilot) reported severe engine vibrations. You could hear the alarms in the cockpit. The pilot came back over the radio a second or two later and said ‘We’re going down, we’re going down’.

“The radio stayed live, and as I turned off the runway I looked back and I saw the plane basically drop out of the sky.  And then the radio went dead and black smoke came up from over the hill.”

The plane crashed into a duplex house.  The people living in the one directly impacted are thought to have been away at the time and the residents of the adjoining home escaped without injury.  All of the plane’s occupants are believed to have perished.

Reuters

Jason Morell, a nearby resident, told Sky News:”It was at such a low level I could see the people sitting on the plane panicking at the windows. I ran outside because my two young girls were out there playing … the woman next door was hysterical. Her father had collapsed. We managed to drag him away from the scene. The plane was that close you could see the panic on their faces.”

The BBC report is HERE.
The Guardian has a REPORT.

Click to play this VIDEO of aerial news footage at the crash scene

Update, Monday am:
It is now being reported that the plane had just taken off from the nearby airport and the pilot had called in his Mayday along with a request to return for the emergency landing.  It appears that he was attempting to miss the houses and put the plane into the stand of trees just beyond the impact point.

Reuters is reporting that the pilot was Mike Roberts, of Effingham, Surrey, who was said to be a director of Flight Consultancy Services, based at Biggin Hill.  Two of the four passengers were noted auto racing personalities, David Leslie, 54, and Richard Lloyd, 63, the boss of Apex Motorsport.

Leslie was a former prominent touring car racer and a commentator on the Eurosport television network.  Lloyd was a former British Saloon Car champion who was part of a three-man team that came second in the Le Mans 24-hour endurance race in 1985.

Reuters

THE BRADDOCK HEIGHTS (MARYLAND) VOLUNTEER FIRE COMPANY is taking their public information responsibility seriously.

After seeing an advertisement for the BullEx Intelligent Training System for fire extinguisher classes, the Company voted to purchase one of the $9,000 systems.  They raised the funds by holding gun raffles, door-to-door solicitations, and their annual food booth at the county fair.

The BullEx system utilizes a computer-controlled propane burner that is “attacked” with a special extinguisher that has the look and feel of a regular ABC dry powder extinguisher.  The training extinguisher sprays a compressed air and water mixture on the training fire and if it’s applied properly the fire goes out.

The system easily fits into the bed of the FD’s pickup truck and they plan to take it to many organizations to train their public on proper fire extinguisher use.

Firegeezer says:  Good for them!!  What a great way to work to make your community safer.

The full story is carried by the Frederick News Post HERE.
BullEx Digital Safety website is HERE.
Frederick County Volunteer Fire and Rescue Assoc. WEBSITE.

Firegeezer reviewed the BullEx “dry” digital trainer last September HERE.