Another outstanding safety video from our colleagues in the United Kingdom. This one from Sussex Safer Roads.
Tip of the helmet to Motorcop. 3.2 million views so far.
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
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Comments OffTrain Burns Inside Station
Comments OffA VACANT PASSENGER TRAIN STORED OUTSIDE THE MILAN, Italy, railroad station burned Tuesday morning causing major disruptions to rail traffic and high damages.
The string of passenger cars were all old coaches that had been taken out of service and scheduled to be scrapped. For some reason, they were stored just outside the terminal shed alongside the operating trackage and had been regularly used by illegal immigrants as overnight sleeping accommodations. This home video shows the magnitude of the fire and the challenge to the firefighters:
The fire began shortly after midnight Tuesday morning and rapidly spread through the entire train. As railroad employees worked to remove all the other nearby cars that are in use, the fire spread to another train of six cars and caused significant damage.
This video shows the other trains being removed by some rather courageous engineers as the flames were threatening them:
So far there is no further information available, but the story will be updated if and when we receive any.
Mercedes Burnz
Comments OffA RAILROAD TRESTLE LEADING TO THE BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA, port facility caught on fire late Monday afternoon and trapped a train carrying a load of brand-new Mercedes Benz automobiles and another 30 cars filled with grain. The autos were being transported from the M-B factory in Vance, Alabama, to the intermodal shipping facility in Brunswick to be exported overseas.
The wood trestle crosses a marsh and is the only rail link to the port. The fire spread up onto the train and destroyed two railcars filled with 16 M-B autos that were worth at least $50,000 each. The bulk of the fire damage was to the train with about $800,000 loss from the autos. The train had been stopped on the trestle while some switching activity was taking place and when the fire started encroaching on the railcars, the switchmen were able to separate the grain cars from the car carriers and tow them off of the trestle.
Firefighters had to hand-lay supply lines down the trestle to reach the fire, but they were able to prevent it from spreading beyond the two involved cars to the rest of the auto loads. The fire that started around 2:30 pm was out by 4:00. Repair work is continuing non-stop on the trestle and they expect to be able to resume rail traffic by late this afternoon (Wednesday).
The Jacksonville (Florida) Times-Union has the latest REPORT.
It was just last month, on February 20, that we were talking on the Morning Lineup (HERE) about how some jurisdictions are abusing their mutual aid agreements by shutting down fire companies and reducing manpower, then relying on the mutual aid departments to pick up the slack on fire calls. One of the examples that we pointed out was the city of Milwaukee which is doing that very thing, bringing in neighboring departments to cover for the MFD’s failure to provide adequate resources of their own.
A more bizarre stunt came just a few days before that when the looney mayor of North Providence, Rhode Island, arbitrarily eliminated the position of Fire Chief. He has delegated the shift battalian chiefs to run the department on a rotation based on their shift work, and if a major fire occurs the city will rely on a fire chief from another jurisdiction coming on over to run the show. (see Firegeezer report HERE.) We predicted on the 20th, “…it shows how far some desparate politicians are willing to go in order to avoid taking proper fiscal responsibility for their own municipalities. This is just the sort of thing that can destroy the entire mutual aid concept, setting fire and rescue service back 50 years.”
Well, it took less than a month for our prediction to come true. On Monday, March 15, the Daytona Beach, Florida, Fire Chief Gary Hughes said that he is no longer going to send city fire units into Volusia County to respond to fires. Daytona Beach and Volusia County have/had a “nearest unit” mutual aid pact, but the city is accusing the county of doing just what we said before, closing stations and reducing the manpower on units below the recommended safe minimum. The Daytona Beach News-Journal reported yesterday:
County officials have “taken their responses dangerously backwards,” the chief said.
Hughes said Daytona Beach firefighters are at risk when they don’t have enough help on a scene outside city limits, and Daytona Beach residents are in jeopardy when their firefighters are tied up on a call outside the city.
In a Feb. 23 letter to the county, Hughes said he’ll send his units “only after all available county resources have been exhausted and only if we have the resources to send.” He added in the letter that “… we will not commit resources to any incident if there are not sufficient personnel on scene to allow for firefighter safety and especially if there is not a formal command structure in place.”
It is obvious that the city is fed up with the growing burden on them to cover for the county’s lack of providing the basic fire protection themselves and shifting the expense to the city’s good will. Read the full article HERE to get the complete story and the county’s response.
WOFL-TV Ch. 35 Orlando interviewed Chief Hughes and filed this video report:
I will reiterate that this is not typical because most municipalities have been judicious and methodical in their compensating for the economic downturn. But there are some places like North Providence, Milwaukee, and Volusia County who think nothing of using their neighbors as stooges to make up for their own failings. Watch out for something like this happening around you and let us know if you see any other municipalities trying this stunt.
We’d better handle our own responsibility here and get this equipment checked out. I’m going to get the coffee started (and it won’t come out green).
EMS and 9-1-1 FICEMS Stakeholders Meeting
Comments OffIt is Spring Break and we have been working non-stop negotiating revisions to the FY2011 budget. Even expensive private universities have revenue issues.
Not gonna lie, it has been brutal. I need a break
The weather-guesser promises two stunningly beautiful days in DC.
NATIONAL EMS & 9-1-1 STAKEHOLDERS MEETING
I am escaping the budget blues to spend the next two days at a federally sponsored “stakeholder’s” meeting in at the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda.
United States Emergency Medical Services started as a federally-funded program during the Great Society movement by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the mid-1960′s. Decades after the federal funding dried-up, the organizational and regulatory framework remained. Works great for some communities, is strangling others.
Almost every part and piece of what we construct as our local EMS system is scheduled for a major revision or is warping under the pressure of more demands with less resources.
The movement from vocational ems training, the only educational program housed in the Department of Transportation, to Scope of Practice in 2013 is a major changes impacting EMS in the next decade.
Eventually, recommendations from the 2006 Institute of Medicine report: Emergency Medical Services At the Crossroads will receive funding.
This stakeholder meeting is part of the federal process of oversight, funding and regulation of EMS.
The Federal Interagency Committee on Emergency Medical Services (FICEMS) is conducting a National EMS and 9-1-1 Stakeholders meeting on March 17-18, 2010 in Washington, DC. The meeting is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Health Affairs.
At this meeting, the FICEMS leadership will present a brief overview of current Federal EMS and 9-1-1 related activities, respond to questions and listen to the opinions and ideas of national organizations and interested individuals about national EMS priorities and future directions. We propose the meeting as one way to improve communications between EMS stakeholders and Federal agencies. The meeting summary will be provided to FICEMS and to the National EMS Advisory Council. (link here)
While not as exciting as twittering with Chronicles of EMS evangelists, it is part of how EMS 2.0 gets federal resources.
Some of the resources that might end up at my university. Cannot get away from the money issue 
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
TWO MEMBERS OF THE CATTARAUGUS FIRE DEPARTMENT near Buffalo, New York, have been arrested and charged with stealing $30,000 to $80,000 from the department.
John Finnegan, 52, the treasurer of the VFD, and Edward Holtz, 39, a member of the department, were in charge of operating the Bell Jar Ticket Game, a fund-raising device. Holtz pleaded guilty to 3rd-degree grand larceny, but Finnegan was scheduled to be brought back to court today or another hearing.
WIVB-TV Ch. 4 has this video report:
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……….. Fire Engineering, February 1956
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A MAUMEE (OHIO) EMS AMBULANCE WAS INVOLVED in a collision early Tuesday morning that sent four people to the hospital including the patient that was being taken there anyway.
The accident occurred around 3:30 am when the ambulance and an automobile traveling on cross streets crashed in an intersection. The driver of the car was seriously injured, but the ambulance personnel and their patient suffered only minor injuries. The details of how and why the accident happened are still under investigation.
WTOL-TV Ch. 11 Toledo has this early video report:
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Popular St. Louis-area Restaurant Burns Down
Comments OffA POPULAR FAMILY-OWNED RESTAURANT IN CAHOKIA, ILLINOIS, was totally destroyed Monday afternoon by a fire of unknown origin. Stingers Restaurant and Pizzeria was not only a local favorite, but they also catered to the area police and firefighters who patronized the business loyally.
Fox2 / Nelson
The restaurant is closed on Mondays, but the owners and a couple of employees had been there earlier preparing an order of carry-outs for the local Meals-on-Wheels program. Nobody was in the business at 2:30 when the fire broke out, however. The incident brought units from 12 neighboring fire departments with over 70 firefighters. The Cahokia VFD attempted to attack it from the interior, but the fire was too advanced to remain inside.
Fox2
The entire roof collapsed into the building and everything was burned. There is no indication of anything suspicious, but the Illinois State Fire Marshal’s office is investigating the cause. KPLR-TV filed this video report:
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Longtime readers might recall a story that we posted in September 2008 about a photo promotion staged by Guinness Book of Records that month. It was a publicity event held in London to promote the upcoming release of the 2009 edition of their popular tome. The feature of the event was the appearance of the World’s Smallest Man alongside the woman who has the World’s Longest Legs. I’m sure you’ll remember the story as soon as you view this photograph from the event:
Firegeezer wrote at the time:
THE 2009 EDITION OF THE GUINNESS BOOK OF RECORDS is scheduled to be released soon. As a means to promote the release, the publishers held a publicity stunt in London’s Trafalgar Square Tuesday where they displayed the world’s smallest man, He Pingping from Outer Mongolia, along with a Russian woman who holds the record for having the longest legs of any other woman in the world.
He Pingping stands 2 ft.-5 inches tall, just barely half the length of Svetlana Pankratova’s legs which have been measured at 4 ft.-4 inches in length.
Back home, Pingping operates a restaurant with his sister and Pankratova, well ….. the 6′-4″ lady stands around a lot.
This video report from AP was included in the story:
This morning we are passing along to you the sad news that He Pingping died Saturday in Rome after a 2-week hospitalization. He was only 21 years old, but had suffered from heart complications and having been born with a rare ailment, primordial dwarfism that caused his diminutive stature. BBC News reports:
Pingping was in the Italian capital to take part in the filming of a television programme called The Record Show. According to the TV production company Europroduzione, he had already filmed two episodes of the programme when he complained of feeling unwell.”He started to feel slightly ill and we decided to take him to hospital. He entered hospital two weeks ago and had all kinds of tests, being a very special person he had to go though all sorts of tests. He went into intensive care three days after he was admitted,” said Marco Fernandez de Araoz, communications director for Europroduzione.
Craig Glenday, Guinness World Records editor-in-chief and the man who measured Pingping in Inner Mongolia to confirm his status as the world’s smallest man, issued this statement:
”From the moment I laid on eyes on him I knew he was someone special – he had such a cheeky smile and mischievous personality, you couldn’t help but be charmed by him. He brightened up the lives of everyone he met, and was an inspiration to anyone considered different or unusual.”
In closing, we’ll add this brief video clip from the London appearance where the videographer caught He Pingping violating Rule #1: “Don’t look up”
Ok, look back down here now and let’s get this equipment checked out. I’m going to get some more coffee started (it doesn’t really stunt your growth).
Factory Fire in France
Comments OffEARLY MONDAY MORNING A MAJOR FIRE broke out in a factory in Sorbiers, Loire, France.
SDIS 42
The fire in the Thiollier textile factory grew rapidly and brought over 60 firefighters to the scene and 8 deluge monitors were in service. Thiollier’s entire plant was destroyed including all of its textile stock and its workshops.
Le Progres
The plant employed 40 people who have now lost their jobs. The cause of the fire is still undetermined.
Le Progres has the story and more photos HERE.
The fire department, SDIS 42 has a 63-image photo gallery on their official WEBSITE HERE.
SDIS 42
Written and prepared by Laurence Delorme
Mug Shots – Coast to Coast
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HAVE YOU GOT YOURS YET ?
Justin Schorr, aka The Happy Medic, has his. In fact, he never leaves home without it.
And you probably want one for home and another for work so that you can start every day with that perfect cup of coffee by drinking it from your very own GeezerCup.
The cost is reasonable and delivery is fast via priority mail. Just CLICK HERE to place your credit card order safely and securely. While you’re at it, go ahead and order one for whoever fills out your annual evaluation report, too. It can’t hurt and it might help.
Georgia Mansion Burns
Comments OffA SANDY SPRINGS, GEORGIA, HOME BURNED TO THE GROUND early Monday morning. The 6,800 sq. ft. mansion was undergoing a major renovation and the family, which had lived there for at least 20 years, was staying elsewhere during the work.
WSB-TV
The fire was discovered by a police cruiser after it broke through the roof shortly before 3 am. When the FD arrived it faced an access challenge because the house had a “several hundred” foot-long driveway and was built against a steep hillside in the rear. The first-arriving officer described it as “almost a fireball” as the stores of paints and flooring materials were feeding the fire.
The home is a total loss and investigators are waiting to get into the rubble to try and find the cause. Currently, arson is not suspected.
WAGA-TV Ch. 5 has this video report:
Driving While GPS’ing Doesn’t Work Either
Comments OffA YOUNG MAN DRIVING A CAR WITH TWO OTHER passengers in Kansas City, Missouri, somehow didn’t see Big Red at 3:30 Sunday morning. Police say that he was fiddling with his GPS receiver while driving and breezed through a red light and smashed into the side of Engine 8 that was returning to quarters after a call.
The fire engine wasn’t too badly damaged, but the car…….
KCTV Ch. 5 filed this video report:
Update: Another one today, scroll down.
GERMANY HAD ONE OF ITS WORLD-RENOWNED MULTI-VEHICLE accidents Friday morning on the freeway that connects Stuttgart and Munich. As the traffic was flowing near Augsburg, a patch of thick fog descended over an icy patch of roadway and the collisions began. When the fog lifted there were 21 trucks and 37 cars piled up in one heap and a total of 170 wrecked vehicles along a 1-kilometer stretch of the A8.
Welt.com
Seventeen people were injured, but none of them were very serious. One eyewitness described the scene as “absolute chaos” and the entire highway was shut down for hours as the mess was cleaned up.
The fire department set up R & R tents and the Red Cross transported hot drinks and food to provision the hundreds of travelers who were stranded in the wintry countryside.
Welt.com
There is a video report available HERE.
Welt.com
Welt has the story and a 17-image photo gallery HERE.
Update: Another pileup in Thuringen
Another multi-vehicle pileup occurred at 4am this morning near Gottingen when 42 cars and trucks started sliding in the icy weather and ended up in a tangled mess. About 80 to 100 people were in the vehicles and 20 of them were injured, 2 seriously. The cause was similar to the previous accident, sudden deterioration of road conditions during a winter storm.
A video report on this second accident is HERE.
Prepared by Christian Lewalter
Around the Fire Web
Comments OffThere are a lot of good postings this morning from around the fire and ems webworld:
* A volunteer fire department in Maryland suffered a sudden drop in membership last week when 12 members were arrested for a variety of crimes. STATter911 has that story HERE. And be sure to check out Dave’s story about a costly multi-building fire in Ocean Grove, New Jersey, during that big storm this weekend HERE.
* Firefighters Own Worst Enemy has an important reminder for all of us. Yes, you already know this, or at least you should, but we have to keep remembering that our new commercial districts are being built to burn and collapse. Check out his report HERE.
* You really should be checking Command Safety regularly, but make sure you read Christopher Naum’s posting on operations in vacant/abandoned structures HERE.
* The Happy Medic has an excellent essay about what should be the last letter you ever write HERE.
* Firefighter Blog, the granddaddy of all the fire/rescue blogs, has posted the NIFC wildland fire conditions and predictions for the next three months and it is interesting to read. Be sure to scroll on down to also read about Ausralia’s safety bunkers and a story on an FD’s experience with homing in on an OnStar signal for a rescue. It’s all on Capt. Mike’s homepage HERE.
* While we’re on the subject of wildfires, Wildfire Today has an unusual story about a rash of fire deaths in India where farmers are being burned to death in their fields from brush fires overtaking them. Make sure you read this story HERE.
You may have already heard that the popular movie and tv actor Peter Graves passed away yesterday at age 83. He had been out to have a brunch with his family to celebrate his upcoming 84th birthday, but when he arrived back home he collapsed on the driveway before he could reach his house.
He was born Peter Aurness in Minneapolis and got into the entertainment business early at age 16. After serving in the Air Force, he followed his older brother James Arness (who had refined the spelling of their last name) to Hollywood and began appearing in various movie roles. By then James was already a major star in the hit tv series Gunsmoke.
Graves’ big break that took him to stardom was when he became the lead in the tv hit Mission: Impossible, a six-year run that began in 1967. After that, he was probably better known as Jim Phelps, the lead character in the popular series. If you’d like to read more about his life, there is a good obituary posted today HERE.
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I have to serve up some congratulations to brave souls who entered this week’s Caption Contest that we posted on Friday (HERE). I knew from the start that this week’s photo would be a real challenge to the imaginations of the contestants, but many of you came through with some good captions. If you’re new to the contest and would like to practice for this week’s upcoming CC, go to the right sidebar in the Categories section and click on “caption contest.”
And a thanks to all of you who helped answer the question about the rope on the hose cart. They started arriving within minutes after the article was posted (HERE) and everyone seems to agree on its purpose.
Now let’s agree to getting this equipment checked out. I need to get some more coffee started. See you back in the day room.
Pop-Sci Now Fully Archived
Comments OffPOPULAR SCIENCE – affectionately known as PopSci – ANNOUNCED LAST WEEK THAT their entire archives is now online with every issue available for free.
The highly successful magazine has been publishing for 137 years, a remarkable run for a magazine. Now you can go online and view every issue in its original layout and appearance, including the period advertising. They added that in the future, they will be adding more advanced features for searching and browsing.
Start right in…. CLICK HERE to begin viewing the archives. But be sure to allow for the fact that you will be up for the rest of the night if you do.
Wired.com explains some MORE.
A Sunday Emergency !
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Season Two, Episode 21
Audit
Paramedic DeSoto must decide whether or not to do an amputation on a trapped man.
AN EARLY-MORNING FIRE IN A ROMAN, (ITALY) DANCE HALL killed four people when they were trapped with only one possible exit.
La Stampa
The club was a large concrete room that had been created in an underground parking garage. The police are investigating the circumstances and what may have caused the fire. One possibility they are considering is a circuit overload from the sound amplifying equipment that was being used for the party.
La Stampa has this STORY along with a photo gallery.
In Diretta has this video report from the fire scene later today:
ONE OF OUR READERS, Richard B. took this photo of a hose cart at the Bodie State Park in California’s Gold Rush country.
He would like to know why that reel of rope is mounted just under the drawbar. This was obviously a hand-drawn cart, as just about all of them were, so it probably has nothing to do with harnessing.
If you know why the rope is there, please tell us in the Comments section.
Bodie is a gold-rush era ghost town. In 1962 the State of California took possession of it and preseved it in toto as a State Historic Park to illustrate the way of life during those heady years of the mid- to late-19th century. They have an excellent website HERE that is worth the visit.
A RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA, FIREFIGHTER WITH SIX YEARS on the job was arrested by Guillford County Sheriff’s deputies Thursday and charged with felony counts of Solicitation of a Minor by Computer to Commit an Unlawful Sex Act and Attempted Indecent Liberties with a Minor.
The sheriff’s office says that Richard Brandon Wells, 31, has been under surveillance for several months after he started communicating over the Internet with an undercover officer he thought was a 14-year-old girl.
On Friday the Raleigh FD place him on suspension and he remains in jail under $100,000 bond.
The News & Observer has the STORY.
4 Alarms at East Bay Lumber Yard
Comments OffA 4-ALARM FIRE DURING THE SATURDAY SHOPPING TIME destroyed a Walnut Creek, California, lumber yard and home improvement center.
Contra Costa Times
The fire was discovered around 1:30 pm when an explosion-like sound was heard and fire broke through the building housing the Piedmont Lumber Co. warehouse. The business is located on N. Main St. near the city center. The spectacular blaze brought traffic to a halt in the entire downtown area as streets were shut down to allow for the FD operations.
The fire spread into the showroom area and destroyed that as well. Ir was five hours before the fire was completely knocked down.
CBS5
No estimates have been released yet on damages. Piedmont has three other locations including a trade-only store in Pittsburg that also had a major fire this past August.
The Contra Costa Times has the STORY.
Edina – 4 , Minnetonka -2
That will be the front page headline of the Sunday newspapers in Minnesota this morning. Outside the Gopher state, it doesn’t mean a whole lot because the rest of the world can’t appreciate the impact that high school hockey has on the state. In the U. S. there is no other amateur or junior hockey league that has the popularity of the Minnesota State High School League. More than 150 high schools around the state have varsity boys’ hockey teams, many of them from small towns where their teams are on a par with those from the bigger cities.
The annual high school championship tournament is followed closely by the entire populace and every game is televised state-wide and now on an internet live-stream as well. For the fans whose local teams didn’t make it to the final rounds, they are generally divided into two groups of cheering squads, the Twin Cities fans versus the Iron Range rooters. The regional rivalries add to the excitement and the tourney games are fully sold out at the two arenas in St. Paul where there are games being played from the morning through late night during the 4-day elimination playoffs.
One of the fans’ favorites each year is the team from Roseau, a tiny town of less than 3,000 way up near the Canadian border that somehow manages to put one of the best teams on the ice every year. They have won the state tournament more times than any other school, most recently in 2007. This year they finished in 4th place. Edina, one of the “Twin Cities” area teams, is a current powerhouse whose win last night gives them a total of 7 championships all-time and ties them with Roseau for the most titles. They are hockey-crazy in Minnesota.
And we’d better get this equipment checked out now. I need to get some more coffee started. The Sunday breakfast will be ready in about a half-hour.
This week’s Sunday photo art comes from Death Valley
The Devil’s Cornfield
A Small Win for the Fire/Rescue Service
Comments OffIN PENNSYLVANIA, AS IN MOST OTHER STATES, the Home Builders Association has launched a vile disinformation campaign against the implementation of the 2009 International Residential Code that went into effect on January 1. The revised code requires all newly constructed townhomes in Pennsylvania, built after Jan. 1, 2010, and all newly constructed one- and two-family homes built after Jan. 1, 2011, to contain a residential fire sprinkler system.
The Pennsylvania HBA has not only started spreading downright lies about the Code, but they also filed a lawsuit against the state in an attempt to block the adoption of the revised code. As part of the lawsuit, they asked for an injunction to halt implementation of the code until the lawsuit was settled, a process that could take years.
On Wednesday March 10 Commonwealth Court Judge Johnny Butler denied the injunction, saying that it does nothing to address the underlying issue they are citing.
The builders’ lawsuit will continue forward, though. It (the suit) claims that changes written by an outside code commission and adopted Dec. 31 by the state is an unconstitutional delegation of lawmaking authority. Judge Butler, in denying the injunction, reminded the builders that the 2006 Code that they are petitioning to go back to were produced by the same process that they are now saying is unconstitutional.
While the lawsuit is still standing, Firegeezer believes that the judge’s point is a strong one and may complicate the HBA’s suit. For now, the new code is still in effect, a small win for the public’s safety.
As part of the war of competing press releases, the National Fire Sprinkler Association published an op-ed in the Scranton Times Tribune HERE that contains some good points that you could add to your own arsenal of facts when the inevitable blizzard of disinformation from the builders and developers in your area begins.