WHILE RESPONDING TO A MULTI-VEHICLE accident, a fire truck from the Vienna, Austria, fire brigade lost a round with a firmly planted tree in the roadway.

The five firefighters on board were slightly injured, but all have returned to work.  The tree was treated and released.

The online magazine of the Viennese fire brigade federation has the story and more pictures HERE.

EIGHT PEOPLE, INCLUDING TWO FIREFIGHTER/EMT’s, WERE INJURED Friday morning when an ambulance collided with a car at a downtown intersection.

Pioneer Press photo

The Chicago Fire Department ambulance was carrying two patients to a hospital when it collided with a car causing the car to roll over.  A second car then struck the first one broadside and a third car rear-ended the second one.

The driver of the first car that flipped and her two children were transported with serious injuries.  The two ambulance patients are in fair condition and the two FF’s sufferd minor injuries.  The driver of car #2 was also transported with non-life threatening injuries.

The official cause of the accident has not been determined, but witnesses say the car entered the intersection into the path of the ambulance.

The Pioneer Press has the latest REPORT.

A LARGE, VACANT OFFICE BUILDING IN DOWNTOWN Phoenix, Arizona, was completely destroyed in a pre-dawn fire this morning.

KTVK

When the fire department arrived at the 4 am blaze, the flames were already visible for several miles and a 2nd alarm was struck immediately.  With the building being vacant, the FF’s stayed out and went into defensive operations to protect any other properties from a fire spread.

There is no indication yet on the cause or point of origin.

KTVK Ch. 3 has the video report:

ON THE DAYS LEADING UP TO HALLOWE’EN, places like YouTube are filled with adolescents blowing up pumpkins with glee and pretending like nobody had ever thought of that before.

But here at Firegeezer we take things to a different level.  Yes, we have our exploding pumpkin, too.  But it’s all for the advancement of science, you see?  What we are doing is reprising a story that we did a year ago today about a pumpkin ka-boom set off by some college students in Iowa:

Some chemistry students at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, put together a chemistry show for high school students as a way of showing them that chemistry can be interesting and fun.

One of the skits was the “exploding pumpkin” routine.  They  combined hydrogen peroxide, which reacts with the inside of the pumpkin to form oxygen and water, with calcium carbide to create a gas. Two minutes later, the gas was ignited, blowing pre-cut sections out of the pumpkin.

“I think we’re convincing some people,” said senior Teresa Beary, president of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society. “We’ve had the biggest crowds today of any time we’ve done demonstrations. Any time you include explosions in a public place, people are going to come.”

Way to go, Gal.  Now play the video:

A BIG CAR KA-BOOM IN A CINCINNATI, OHIO, suburb Thursday morning brought an entire neighborhood out into the street to see what happened.

Cincinnati Enquirer / Glenn Hartong

Anthony Nuss, 30, had just gotten into his car and started it when the ignition flashed a pocket of acetylene gas and blew the car into pieces that were spread hundreds of feet in all directions.

Closest to him were 10-yr.-old Mike Metzger and his mom Anna who ran to the car and successfully pulled the victim out just before the fuel tank ignited also.  The man was burning and had been deafened from having his eardrums blown out by the blast.

After investigation, it was determined that the acetylene tank had been left laying in the back seat of the car overnight and had been leaking.  When the car fired up, it triggered that massive blast that left Nuss burned.  He is expected to survive, however.

WKRC Ch. 12 Cincinnati has a good video report of the youngster’s brave rescue:

The Cincinnati Enquirer has the full story and another video HERE.

Updated, video added.  Scroll down.  

KTRK-TV  

HOUSTON, TEXAS, FIREFIGHTERS ARE ON THE SCENE of a 3-alarm fire in an apartment complex that is already considered to be suspicious.  The fire was first reported at 4:45 am, Central time, and was knocked down around 6:35 am, but not until four six units were destroyed in this morning’s blaze.  At one point, an exterior wall collapsed.

It was exactly one week ago, almost to the hour, that the same building suffered heavy damages from an arson that was one of three fires set simultaneously.  This is also the third fire in two weeks at the complex.

KTRK-TV

The Houston Chronicle has an early report HERE.
KTRK Ch. 13 has a video report from the fire scene HERE.

KHOU-TV has some good raw video of the fire:

It was yesterday morning that the phone call came in.  I had been expecting it any day soon, but when it came there was still a certain finality to it that has an impact.  My dear father had died earlier in the morning at age 92.

He was in the last, and darkest, phase of Alzheimer’s disease and had reached that point where the body has forgotten everything, including how to breathe in and out.  But throughout his ordeal he was always the perfect gentleman that he had been his entire life and I can honestly say that he was pleasant and happy every day despite his limitations and frustrations that come along with the degeneration that was imposed on him.

While people usually associate the death of a close relative as a time for sadness, my entire family look at this as a time of joy.  He lived a long and very productive life, always active and participating.  But for the past two years he has been suffering in gradually worsening stages and knowing that it will only get worse, not better with each day that comes along.  Finally, he has been released from his diseased body and his spirit now knows complete peace and a happiness that cannot be found down here on our earth.

Yes, we will all be grieving for a while.  But we will also be celebrating his time spent with us.

When he retired from the federal government in 1973 he moved to Tucson, Arizona, and has lived there since.  Now he will be brought back to his hometown Jacksonville, Illinois, where he was born and raised (and lived until I was 3 yrs. old), and will be laid alongside his parents and my mother, not far from his sisters and dozens of other family members.  As it should be.

Here is a sidenote that you may find interesting, since “health and fitness” is a hot topic these days.  When Dad retired after nearly 35 years of government service, he was carrying the highest sick leave balance of any civilian employee of the entire U. S. Government.  He never once used a single day of sick leave.  How about that?

I’ll go start the coffee now.  Let’s get the equipment checked out.

AN UNCOMFORTABLE VIDEO SHOWING A NEAR MISS.

THIS video, created by Loudoun County (VA) Fire and Rescue, matches a citizen video, radio traffic, post-incident interviews to provide a real-time record of a burning lightweight component single family home with a partial collapse early in the fire suppression operations.

In the 1990’s many firefighters died in burning buildings because they got entangled and ran out of air. A fewer number were overwhelmed by a flashover, CO poisoning or structural collapse.

Today it is the first arriving fire company experiencing a structural collapse or flashover within the first few minutes of interior operations. 

Link to related Loudoun County investigation documents. Including the 210 page, 3.63 MB Significant Injury Investigative Report.

Initial STATter911 report.

ALTHOUGH YOU STILL MIGHT LIKE TO TRY IT if you’re late for work and get stopped.  Just hope that the magistrate doesn’t learn of this precedent that was just set in a Swedish court.  The Local news from Sweden tells us:

A woman from southern Sweden has lost her bid to have a speeding fine overturned on the ground that she was suffering from diarrhea at the time of the offence.

The 49-year-old woman from Trelleborg explained to the local district court that she was experiencing stomach problems when she was pulled over for driving 86 kilometres per hour in a 70 km/h zone.

But the court ruled that a case of the runs did not equate to a need for speed.

A situation can only be classed as an emergency if somebody’s life is in danger or if a driver hits the gas in an attempt to prevent a serious crime.

As the woman’s desire to get home to her toilet did not fit into either category, the court ordered her to pay the speeding fine.

There’s no doubt the decision is binding.

IN NORFOLK, ENGLAND, A 2-SEATER BI-PLANE was approaching the runway at Seething airfield Wednesday when it came too low and clipped the chemical tank being towed by a farm tractor that was spraying a cropland.  The plane then crashed into the runway about 40 yards beyond the tractor and burst into flames.

BBC News

The resulting fire was handled by the airport staff before the county fire brigade arrived.  One of the two men on board died immediately and the other is in critical condition at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.

The tractor driver who is in his 60’s was treated for shock.

The Telegraph has the full STORY.

CHIEF BILLY GOLDFEDER, PUBLISHER OF FIREFIGHTER CLOSE CALLS and The Secret List has asked us to pass along this important announcement:

After nearly a year of researching, assessing, and discussing the importance of caring for the needs of Firefighters who have been critically injured in the line of duty, the Int’l Association of Fire Chiefs Safety, Health and Survival Section (www.IAFCSafety.org) has released a short survey (link to survey is below) to collect more detailed and specific information on those needs. The survey will assist the IAFC SHS in gathering resources in developing sample SOG’s for departments to use in the event of a critical firefighter injury. While we have all been very strongly focused on the issues of LODD (and will continue to be)…an area that requires additional focused attention is critical FIREFIGHTER INJURY.

Link to survey: http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=WEB228D3JXPZZ4

Please help the IAFC SHS spread the word about this survey so that they can obtain as much information as possible. If you know of a firefighter or emergency medical service worker who has been injured, please let them know about this survey. It is confidential and the information gathered will only be reviewed by the project committee.

THE FANTASIES GENTLEMAN’S CLUB in Huntsville, Alabama, is having both a Boss problem and a Fire problem.

It all began early Monday morning around 12:30 am when the strip club’s owner, Angelo Contino, got drunk and decided to hold 3 of his employees captive at gunpoint in a locked room for reasons unknown.  Other employees then called the police who arrived quickly, but were unable to get into the area where Contino was locked in with the captives.

Angelo Contino
(Huntsville Police photo)

When he finally passed out from too much John Barleycorn, one of the workers managed to get one of the doors opened and police then took Angelo to the pokey where he’s being held on $31,000 bond.

Later that same day, around 3 pm, an ambulance responding to an emergency elsewhere was passing the Gentleman’s Club and they saw smoke and fire coming from the rear of the building.  The HFD put the fire out without any difficulty, but the investigator found evidence of chemicals being used to start it and have determined it to be an arson.

WAAY-TV

But wait, there’s more.  12 hours after the fire another fire started in the building.  Currently it is believed to have been a rekindle.  Angelo is still locked up.

From primary reports of The Huntsville Times