REUNION ISLAND IS A FRENCH TERRITORY in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar. The approx. 1,000 sq. mile island is home to about 800,000 French citizens and also the home of Reunion National Park, a primal forest containing many rare and endangered species of trees and flowers.
AFP
Last Tuesday, 25 October, two arsonists started a wildfire that is still burning as this posting is being written. The major fire that is moving through a mountainous region grew larger than the 400 firefighters that were rounded up on the island could handle and the call for help went to the head of the national fire service in Paris. Initially 171 firefighters were sent on the 6-hour flight to Reunion to assist, but more help was needed.
AFP
Over the next few days three more groups of additional firefighters, making a total of 820 FF's on the line, were sent along with 50 tons of equipment. Large firefighting airplanes are impractical because the local airport cannot accommodate them, but several helicopters were flown over to assist. By this morning the fire was contained but will still be burning for a while. So far, only one dwelling, a farmhouse has been lost to the fire. The Minister of Ecology announced that the fire is a "major ecological disaster."
20minutes has the STORY. Le Nouvel Observateur has MORE. Clicanoo has fire zone overlays on satellite photos HERE.
A THREE-ALARM FIRE STRUCK BRIDGETT'S ANIMAL KINGDOM in Bordentown, New Jersey, Sunday night. The private zoo which operates primarily as a petting zoo and children's educational facility houses several species both large and small.
Last night's fire killed one of the giraffes, several birds and some puppies. The fire broke out around 8:40 pm not long after they closed following a Hallowe'en party for kids in costumes. Several workers were still on the premises and were able to save most of the collection including a leopard, fox, camel, monkees and wolves among others.
The fire had a good start when the FD arrived and a second was struck immediately. Shortly after fire operations began, the crews were withdrawn from the building and master streams were put into limited use due to the lack of any hydrants in the area.
There were no reports of any injuries and the state police arson unit is on the scene today investigating the cause of the fire.
It was just six months ago in April when another fire on the property killed the owner Bridgett Stipp. Her home on the grounds caught fire and her mother who was visiting was trapped inside. The firefighters successfully rescued the lady, but Bridgett, unknowing of the rescue, ran back into the burning house to look for her mother and never came back out. She was age 43. You can read about that event HERE.
Firegeezer is collaborating with TheFireStore to have
firefighters in the field test and review products found in their catalogue
and then publishing the reviews here and in TheFireStore's
own fine blog, On Scene, which is posted several times each week.
Today we are posting the final part of a 3-part series of field-testing the FoxFire Illuminating safety products. First we brought you the results of the active testing of the All-In-One-Coating Kit (CLICK HERE to review it) done by the Stafford County (Virginia) Fire & Rescue Department. Last week we gave you the findings of the Illuminating Grip Wrap product (CLICK HERE to see that review). Today we illustrate and test the Illuminating Helmet Band.
The helmet band is easily applied, just slip the elastic band over your helmet and it can be transferred and re-used on another one.
We used the Illuminating Helmet Band on all of our evolutions and it was very well received. The #1 reason for wanting the FoxFire illuminating helmet band was the ability to be seen during extremely low visibility. Everybody commented on being able to see the helmet band at great distances and it made it easy to stay in contact with crew members.
Viewed in dim lighting above ^ and in total darkenss below v
The firefighters would like to see different color options much like the grip wrap options. They said it would make unit identifying easier. All of them expressed interest in purchasing the helmet band and they all wanted more information.
"I could see the helmet band in a bedroom at the end of a smoky hallway." ….. Lt. Thompson, Engine 9 B-Shift.
In a smoke-filled room, compare the helmet with the illuminating band
on the left with the helmet barely visible just to the right of it.
"This would be great if we could get colors coodinated for each company. It would allow us to identify unit personnel in a darkened environment." ….. Sgt. Cunningham, Rescue Engine 14 C-Shift.
For more information on the Illuminating Helmet Band along with an instructional video and to order one from TheFireStore, CLICK HERE to go to their catalogue page.
Monday Morning – We've Lost It, But We Can Get It Back
A short while back, Ray McCormack started a movement called "Only you can prevent first-responder." Perhaps it was a little tongue-in-cheek humor when he first initiated the program, but it got a lot of us looking at the obvious. More and more this odious catch-all is being used across the entire information highway, television and print. And in many instances it is being helped along by fire-rescue PIO's who have gladly jumped into the pool of cliches and willingly applied the epithet to their own firefighters, paramedics, chief officers and volunteer canteen drivers.
Why is this all-encompassing, yet meaningless term taking over the reporting universe? I suspect it's partly due to plain laziness on the part of the news responders who not only like to compress their vapid thoughts into easy-to-chew soundbites, but they also think it's cute to make up new words and phrases in their attempt to mold the thinking process of the rabble. (I still can't get over "he was helicoptered to the hospital.") But you know, once the news responders get on a roll with degrading the language, it picks up speed as it goes downhill.
Last week Dave Statter reported in STATter911 HERE about one of those Patch online newsletters where the reporterette, who writes like she's fresh out of the high school newspaper club, led off by calling the firefighters "safety personnel." Never once was the term "firefighters" used. The people who put out fires in her universe are safety personnel and fire teams who used two large containers of water to put out the fire.
But I am distressed to pass along the news that it's not only our titles that have been diluted, but our exclusive life-saving labors are now being diminished by emergency-wannabe's who are actively attempting to lump all humanity together as one big happy bunch of safety personnel. In our report on the large fire in Carson, California, the other day (HERE) that took place across the street from the city hall, the video report we provided showed that all the gummint workers poured out onto the street and sprung into action. The mayor went on camera telling how those brave city employees were doing all they could to help the old folks who had to be evacuated from the senior living exposure, and then the camera turned to another official. Karen Avilla, the city treasurer informed the world that, "All city workers are emergency employees at any time there is an emergency!" So bring in one more transit bus to rehab the groundskeepers and librarians, folks. We've lost it.
I'm ready to join the battle, Ray. Where do I sign up? Watch out, news responders!
"Report to rehab as soon as you're rotated out."
Sign here and then let's get the checksheets so we can get this equipment checked out now. I'll go start some more coffee. See you back in the day room.
Creative approach to a mass casualty staffing issue
Kantele Franko files this report for the Associated Press:
Emergency responders will test their capabilities as they use standard decontamination procedures to “treat” the zombies and make them “human” again during the exercise at Ohio Wesleyan University.
“People got zombie fever here in Delaware,” said Jesse Carter, a spokesman for the local health district.
The exercise and dozens more outreach efforts across the country were inspired by an online post from the CDC.
It attempted to spice up the usual emergency preparedness advice — have a plan, make an emergency kit with water and food, and so on — by tapping into the cultural popularity of the zombie theme.
The May blog posting got 30,000 hits in one day, and it continues to draw thousands of visitors daily, said Maggie Smith of the CDC’s public health preparedness office.
Selby Stadium event as explained by Delaware County EMA
This will be a “Zombie Exercise” happening on Halloween. The victims once exposed to a chemical will be turned into a zombie. Zombies will have to go through decontamination to be turned back to normal.
We will be testing our first responders with approximately 250 Zombie Victims versus the 20-25 volunteers that assist for normal hazardous materials exercises.
To add to the fun (and the reality), if a First Responder comes in contact with the spilled chemical or a zombie while not wearing proper Personal Protective Equipment, they too will be turned into a zombie and will have to go through decontamination.
This exercise will run from 1:00 PM until 3:00 PM and we plan to have everything wrapped up by 4:00 PM.
Community Rallies to Honor and Provide Proper Burial
WILLIE SNOW WAS A LIVING LEGEND in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area. But when he passed away in August he had become a "forgotten hero" lost in the pages of time. Willie, you see, had not once, but twice proven how ordinary people can do extraordinary things when called upon by fate. And yet when he died his body lay unclaimed and bound for a pauper's cremation and then to be tossed aside forever.
Willie Snow
Willie's first assignment doing the Lord's work came when he was the head dishwasher at the infamous Beverly Hills Supper Club in nearby Southgate, Kentucky, in May 1977. On the night of the famous fire at the large nightspot, he played a major role in saving an untold number of lives. The Cincinnati Enquirer summarizes:
Snow, the head dishwasher, was in the kitchen when someone told him the Zebra room was hot. He and one of the owners went to the basement to check for fire but saw nothing. About 30 minutes later, smoke was reported in the Zebra room. They rushed to the basement and saw flames inside the Zebra room wall, Snow recalled.
He went upstairs and alerted the staff to get the patrons out of the building. Then went outside where people were yelling "Cabaret Room, Cabaret Room."
Snow and two other men began pulling bodies from the smoke-filled entrance where they had begun to pile up. "No one came out under their own power after I arrived," he wrote.
Brock and others carried the bodies to a triage area as Snow pulled them out.
"He was a large man and he could carry two or three," Brock said. "It was like going into a war zone and he was just bringing them out and just handing them off."
In the book, Snow said he had no idea how many people he pulled from the building. When he couldn't see anymore bodies, Snow put a napkin over his mouth and crawled into the building feeling for more, he wrote.
Finding nothing he crawled back to the exit where a doctor told him he could not go in anymore.
There were 165 fatalities in that fire which is still remembered as one of the worst mass casualty fires in modern American history.
Amazingly, it was 11 years later that he found himself reprising his role as rescuer. Snow was driving home one night when he came across a bus crash on I-71. A drunk driver had crashed into a school bus loaded with children and the bus had caught fire trapping most of the children inside. Running to the rear emergency door, he once again began plucking victims from a raging fire saving dozens of children. Unfortunately 24 children and three adults perished in what is the worst-ever drunken driving crash in the U. S.
Cincinnati Enquirer
When Willie died in August he was 80 years old and his only survivor, a daughter was unable to afford to bury him. Through a stroke of luck, an employee in the Hamilton County Coroner's office had a friend who had worked at the supper club that tragic night, the aforementioned Dave Brock. Hearing about the sad situation, Brock went public and soon found a local firm, the Shorten and Ryan Funeral Home who said they would donate the funeral and burial costs for Mr. Snow.
WKYT-TV posted this video report:
"We will put him to rest the right way. As a hero," said Brock, making sure that Snow, a man who saved so many from flames, doesn't have to leave here in a final fire.
Visitation will be from 6 to 8 p.m. Monday at The Imwalle Memorial, 4811 Vine St., in St. Bernard. Burial will be at 11 a.m. Tuesday at the Vine Street Hill Cemetery.
Sources:
The Cincinnati Enquirer. WKYT-TV. Firefighters Own Worst Enemy has a good summary of the fire HERE.
See Firegeezer March 2009 report on request to re-open the investigation
into the supper club fire amid arson allegations HERE.
Failure to Drive All the Way Through Proves Costly
A SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, McDONALD'S RESTAURANT is closed for several months following a fire that was started by a pickup truck in their Drive-Through lane early Saturday morning around 3:30 am.
KSL-TV/Rambo photo
The truck was at the pickup window when the driver noticed flames coming from under the hood, then erupting and engulfing the vehicle. The driver bailed out as the restaurant employees began an immediate evacuation of the premises. Within moments the fire had extended into the overhang and then into the roof area.
When the first fire units arrived on the scene the entire roof structure was well involved. The fire was brought under control in 40 minutes and McDonald's officials put the damage estimate at $1 million+.
A THUNDERING EXPLOSION WAS HEARD AND FELT throughout the entire city of Atchison, Kansas, Saturday evening when a grain elevator blew up killing at least three workers. The blast at 7:15 pm sent up a fireball that was seen several miles distant from the Bartlett Grain Co. terminal on the banks of the Missouri River just south of the city.
The explosion blew the top off of the elevator.
(NPG News photo)
The latest report says that three people have been killed and three more are still missing. At least two others have been transported with severe burn injuries. The firefighters have had to stay away from the silo because of the possiblilty of a second explosion, but as daylight approaches they are making an approach to the site. It is their plan to begin digging through the rubble to search for the missing victims. Heavy equipment is being moved in to assist in the search.
The Kansas City, Kansas, Fire Department sent some units to assist at the incident 50+ miles away.
The Atchison Daily Globe has the STORY.
KMBC-TV Kansas City has MORE.
While you were sleeping between calls last night, FossilMedic was being the good trooper and sitting up all night posting updates on the wicked triple-decker fire in Boston. (Scroll down to the next posting.) The blaze started early this morning during the snowstorm and the heavy winds spread it quickly through at least four buildings. The dispatch went to five alarms and was challenging to say the least.
The fire is still active as we're at the Lineup, but is under control and probably knocked down by now. An early report says that three people have been transported with injuries, but no distinction between civilians or firefighters. WCVB-TV has a camera crew on the scene and filed this early report that also tells of a couple of neighbors that helped prevent a possible fatality:
I expect that Mike has zonked out by now, so we'll have to keep an eye on things from here on. I'm wondering if we'll have to adopt the famed Pinkerton logo? What do you think?
While we're up and about, we'd better get this equipment checked out now. Eternal vigilance calls for plenty of coffee, so I'll get some more of that going, too. See you back in the day/night room.
Diane Shiller, writing in the October 29 Houston Chronicle, posted this article:
An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses. …
"It won't be difficult; we all know who they are and where they are located," says the man, who underlines the group's international ties by speaking Spanish with the accent of a Spaniard while using Mexican slang.
He also implies that the group will expose mainstream journalists who are somehow in cahoots with the Zetas by writing negative articles about the military, the country's biggest fist in the drug war.
"We demand his release," says the Anonymous spokesman, who is wearing a mask like the one worn by the shadowy revolutionary character in the movie V for Vendetta, which came out in 2006. "If anything happens to him, you sons of (expletive) will always remember this upcoming November 5."
Just as WikiLeaks raised havoc with international politics, Anonymous has the capability of disrupting the operations of the Los Zetas Cartel and their partners.
Asymmetrical Warfare
Definition: "warfare in which opposing groups or nations have unequal military resources, and the weaker opponent uses unconventional weapons and tactics, as terrorism, to exploit the vulnerabilities of the enemy."
In this situation we have the second largest and most violent Mexican drug cartel being threatened by a decentralized online community of information technologists who are growing into a significant international force.
Anna Heim, writing in TNW Latin America, looks at the online actions taken against alleged Los Zetas supporters that appear to match the approach taken by Anonymous against earlier targets.
After the publicity of a NYPD commander pepper-spraying an Occupy Wall Street protestor, Anonymous made a similar threat last month:
Hello NYPD, We are Anonymous.
Around the internet, we have seen countless videos of your blatant disregard for first amendment rights. Whether it be by tasering, macing, kettling, or otherwise physically harming those involved in the occupy wall street protests.
We will not stand idly by and let these misdeeds go unpunished. We are hereby calling for an immediate apology and resignation of NYPD commissioner Raymond Kelley and the supervising officers involved. We already know who they are, their information is a matter of public record.
And to those police officers that are "just following orders:" We invite you to join us and stand with our cause in solidarity. An enemy of our enemy is our friend. Join us.
If our demands are not met by october sixth, we will unleash hell on your phones, your servers, and anything else we can find.
We are anonymous. We do not forgive. We do not forget. You have nine days.
They released personal information on the officer and disrupted some of the information technology assets of NYPD. They may have organized a denial of service (DoS) attack on the Oakland police department.
The implication is that public safety organization information (organization and personal) and digital technology are vunerable to hackers.
TWO LAKE CITY, FLORIDA, DOMINO'S PIZZA SHOP managers were arrested and charged with burning out a rival Papa John's pizza shop on October 20. Bryan David Sullivan 21, Lake City, was arrested Friday and Sean Everett Davidson, 23, Lake City, was taken into custody Thursday, both of them charged with arson. They told investigators that they thought their business would increase if they got rid of the competition.
Bryan Sullivan (left) and Sean Davidson
The two men constructed an incendiary device that ignited prematurely and burned one of them on the arms before they threw it into the Papa John's shop window. The resulting fire burned out the business. Following the 3 am blaze, investigators found "several leads" that took them to Davidson who then admitted setting the fire. He implicated Sullivan who was the main culprit of the scheme and was Davidson's boss at the pizza shop.
The Domino's franchise owner had no part in the act and cooperated fully with the police investigation.
ANOTHER REPORT COMES IN about a long-serving firefighter who joined the fire service before your parents were born. This time we learn about a man from League City, Texas, who is 92 years old. Art Hewitt came home from WW-II after being held captive as a POW for a year, then joined the League City VFD.
KTRK-TV Ch. 13 Houston paid a visit to League City FD recently and had a nice chat with FF Hewitt. Then they ran this video report about it. Notice that the fire station is now named in his honor:
Art had to quit going to fires when he reached age 85, but he still walks down to the station every morning to check the equipment and help out around the station. Firegeezer bets that he knows how to run the Bunn-O-Matic, too.
A SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, FIRE CAPTAIN sits in jail this morning after being charged with stealing approx. $63,000 from his IAFF Local's bank account, leaving it depleted. He has been serving as treasurer of Local 1401 for the past five years.
Michael Bechtold, 39, of the Rancho Adobe Fire Protection District, is charged with six counts of felony grand theft and may be facing further charges as the investigation continues. The Santa Rosa Press Democrat tells us:
Bechtold, who has been in custody since his Wednesday arrest, requested a court-appointed lawyer at his arraignment. He answered yes when Judge Ken Gnoss asked if he expected to be fired from his job of at least 15 years.
Bechtold's bail was set at $60,000 on the grand theft charges but he was prevented from being released on bail because of a probation violation charge. Bechtold was on probation for a 2009 domestic violence conviction.
On Friday he was charged with embezzlement, grand theft, forgery and violation of his probation. He is accused of using all the stolen funds for personal use including season tickets to San Jose Sharks hockey games and a trip to Disneyland.
The members of his Local became suspicious when he began failing to provide the required financial reports on the bank account. After a few months of dodging the task, he submitted what appeared to be a forged report and the officers notified the sheriff's office.
Bechtold was currently serving as the FPD's fire marshal and had been on the job for about 15 years.
Read more in the Press Democrat HERE.
Local 1401 WEBSITE.
It looks like an early start to winter for those folks up in the Northeast U. S. today. The Rocky Mountains zone already had their first blizzard of the season the other day, so they are busy enough themselves digging out. Now a separate weather system is sending a large clump of precipitation (is "clump" a valid meteorlogical term?) from the Southeast in a northbound movement that is dumping heavy rain along its path, but once it hits the Mason-Dixon Line, it will quickly change into snow and the weather experts are telling us that our friends up in Connecticut and Massachusetts will be getting at least a foot of the wet white stuff. At least this one's happening on the weekend and most office workers will be staying off the roads.
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In other news, this from the non-essential information center, earlier this month Google announced they were shutting down their short-lived Buzz social network. Oh, you thought they already had? So did most other people. The charge into Twitterdom that was supposed to be a great way to share your photos and innermost thoughts with your neo-friends was introduced in March 2010 and immediately stepped into a truckload of horse pucky. It turned out that the whiz kids at Google thought it would be really kewl to automatically connect Google Mail users' contacts with other Googler's contacts and thus made everybody's address book public to the world, including spammers.
That even brought a Federal investigation into their privacy policies and Google never pulled out of that one. No matter. They are banking on Google-Plus to do all the wonderful things they had hoped for plus more. Setting their sights on Facebook, I believe. So Buzz is out, Plus is in.
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And one more announcement from the world of digital magic comes from Hewlett-Packard, those purveyors of PC's and scads of other computer-related products. Back in August their head honcho Leo Apotheker said that H-P was going to revert to a specialty software company and sell off their PC branch, thus leaving the hardware computer business. Within days their stock price dropped 40% and the major customers they were banking on focusing on announced that they in turn would be leaving H-P's Rolodex files. By September Aptotheker had become the former head honcho and the scrambling board of directors hired Meg Whitman to run the company. She became the third CEO in a span of 14 months for the giant, but she brings a strong reputation as a good leading light in the corporate world, earning her stripes founding and growing the e-Bay outfit.
Two days ago on Thursday Mme. Whitman announced that H-P will NOT be leaving the PC market after all. They will continue making and marketing their industry-leading brand and all the ancilliarys that go along with it. I have no doubt that when she was interviewed for the job, she told the board that she would take that path if appointed, so we can expect this to settle down now.
So let's settle down ourselves and get the equipment checked out for the day. I really need some more coffee now, so I'll stride on over to the Bunn-O-Matic and get another pot started. See you back in the day room.
Some Good Articles From Our Favorite Fire/Rescue Sites
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* STATter911 has a story about a western Maryland fire department standing on principle and refusing to help build a Habitat for Humanity house because the people in charge won't allow sprinklers to be included. See the story HERE.
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* Brotherhood Instructors has a good video review on the importance of coordinated ventilation HERE. Be sure you scroll past the videos to read the accompanying article.
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* If you haven't been reading Boron Extrication regularly, you are missing a vital part of your vehicle extrication knowledge and safety. Smitty is a top-grade automotive engineer as well as an active volunteer firefighter. He knows what he is talking about and this month he is talking about the side-curtain airbag gas cannisters that are stored in roof rails. (Did you know they were there?) Go to the WEBSITE HERE and read the article, then scroll down a little farther and check out the news of the upcoming front-seat center airbags coming soon. They are designed to protect the far-side passenger from side collisions. Then bookmark the site.
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* Report on Conditions tells us the story of the quick-thinking toilet that put the fire out just as the engine crew was stretching the line HERE.
IN KINGSTON, ONTARIO, THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER the Whig-Standard will occasionally point out the fire department's message of fire safety and sprinklers. Firegeezer has mentioned this before (HERE) and another situation arose that led to it again. On Thursday the Whig-Standard reported:
An automatic sprinkler head is credited for limiting the damage at a Park Street high-rise apartment early Wednesday morning.
Kingston Fire and Rescue responded to the fire that started on a stovetop in a 10th-floor unit. The smoke alarm in the suite had been disabled prior to the fire, but the sprinkler limited damage in the apartment to less than $1,000.
"Without a working smoke alarm, the occupant of this apartment is fortunate to be alive today," Kingston fire inspector Del Blakney said in a news release.
Water flow from the sprinkler extinguished the fire and sounded the building alarm, alerting other occupants.
How about you? When you have a fire that was so small that the news media wouldn't consider it worth reporting, do you turn it into a "success story" and let them know about it?
A SUDDEN PLUNGE IN TEMPERATURE caused roads to ice up in New England early Friday morning, leading to dozens of highway accidents. On I-93 in New Hampshire a multi-car accident brought a Manchester fire engine to the scene along with police units. While they were working the incident a patch of black ice covered the roadway and another accident unfolded.
Police officers and firefighters were on the scene of an accident on Interstate 93 between exits 7 and 8, near the Wellington overpass, when a tractor-trailer was unable to stop and slid into a fire truck. Two police cruisers were also damaged. The driver of the tractor-trailer said he was only going about 25 mph when he saw flashing lights and the vehicle in front of him start to slide. That's when the driver said he hit the brakes.
"Once I applied the brakes the truck just started driving out of control and I couldn't stop. The whole entire highway is black ice and pretty much I ended up sliding into the fire truck because I cut the wheel left to try to avoid the accident," said Joshua, the driver of the tractor-trailer.
Officers on the scene of the accident said it was difficult to walk on the road, let alone drive.
A Manchester District Chief said there were so many accidents on the Interstate that at one point every unit in the FD, 11 pieces of apparatus, were on calls.
WHAT IS PURPORTED TO BE THE WORLD'S LARGEST GOLD COIN has recently been minted in Australia. The Perth Mint, which is part of the Western Australia State government, began working on the coin 18 months ago and will unveil it officially when the Queen visits Perth in the next few days.
AFP
The coin is cast of 99.99% pure gold and weighs more than a metric ton. While the face value of the coin is stamped as $1 million (Aus.), its actual value is more than $53 million.
This video was taken by the Perth Mint and shows how they made the massive coin:
THE INTERNATIONALLY-KNOWN BOUTIQUE BAKERY Laduree on the Champs-Elysees had a fire in their pastry kitchen Thursday that gave shivvers to the Parisians. Laduree is best known as the "inventor" of the macaron cakes and still regarded as the best.
Reportedly, the fire broke out in the pastry kitchens and the smoke spread through the ducts to the 2nd and 3rd floors of the building, filling the tea rooms and restaurant. Remodeling work being done in these kitchens was the cause of the fire.
Metro France
"It's nothing serious. Some damage at the kitchen," said Safia Thomass, a spokesman for the brand. "We are doing the work of beautification and there was a human error. One of the workers broke a pipe and it caused a fire. There is property damage caused by the black smoke. "
There were 125 firefighters dispatched on the call that looked threatening at first with smoke pouring out the windows throughout the 6-story building, but the fire was extinguished quickly. Within two hours everything including the traffic was back to normal, but the shop will remain closed because of the extensive smoke damage. All the employees will be temporarily transferred to other shops in Lauree's chain.
The champion macarons. (AFP)
As for the famous Macarons, no worries. They are baked at another location anyway.
A SPECTACULAR FIRE STRUCK an apartment complex under construction in Carson, California, Thursday evening.
KTLA-TV
The fire broke out around 5 pm Pacific in the expansive senior-living complex that was being added onto. The large 3-story, 150-unit addition was not yet closed in and the fire grew rapidly, also spreading into a close-by mobile home park.
KCAL-TV has some good footage of the fire in this video report:
KABC-TV reports:
"All of the fire protection in modern construction is not in a place that is just frame," said Capt. Mark Savage of the Los Angeles County Fire Department.
That radiated heat combined with wind gusts sent the fire into a nearby mobile home park. More than 139 mobile homes were evacuated. At least 10 homes in the park were damaged by flames. About 120 seniors living next door to the blaze were also evacuated.
KABC-TV images
The Los Angeles County Fire Department had the fire knocked down around 7:30 pm.
The Los Angeles Times has more HERE.
KABC-TV has additional video and details HERE. They also have a 30-image photo gallery HERE.
Earlier this week I had my first encounter with the Geek Squad. That's the crew that repairs computers and hooks up WiFi's for the digitally challenged, etc. I believe they started out as a mobile repair squad that drives to homes and businesses to fix computer-related problems on site, but a few years ago the Best Buy retail chain entered into an agreement with them of some sort to also operate Best Buy's in-house electronic repair concession. And that's where I went on Tuesday.
My older PC desktop that I use as a backup or a convenience upstairs occasionally, decided that it was tired and needed more "sleep." But when it went into the Sleep mode, it would shut off instead, and I would have to power the machine back up. After a couple of weeks of that, it then refused to power up at all. Unresponsive to repeated pressings of the power switch. Since I have no clue about how computers are put together and what those strange looking thngs are, I decided to see if I could get it repaired because it was just a power problem, not a program crash.
For some reason, local computer repair shops did not take hold like the auto repair shops have done over the past 80 years. There are only a few small one-man repair centers and they spring up and wither away regularly without ever becoming established. If anybody does get a good reputation for reliability, then they seem to always be backed up with business that requires you to wait three weeks for basic repair service. So it was off to Best Buy I went, knowing that at least they will be trustworthy.
When I arrived with my PC tower tucked under my arm, I expected to leave it off and get a phone call after a day or so telling me what they found and how much it would cost to fix it. But that wasn't the case at all. The man at the counter was finishing up business with someone and I had to wait a few minutes and then a couple more customers arrived and got in line behind me. When my turn came up, the repairman (there appeared to be about three of them back there) listened to my description of the problem and then he set about taking the tower apart to find out what was wrong. It took him about 10 or 15 minutes, but he found the problem and told me how much it would cost to fix it. As it turned out, the repair cost was more than the old machine was worth, so I asked him if he could at least download my files from the hard drive. No problem, but I would have to leave it (and pay a reasonable charge, of course). So I did, expecting a 2 or 3-day wait before it was done. Wrong again…. early the next morning I got a phone call telling me that the task was done.
This is just a round-about way to relay to you that I had excellent service with what I was expecting to be a drawn-out affair. I was especially impressed by their policy of doing the diagnosis right then and there instead of the "leave it a couple of days and we'll check it out" routine that you usually get. So consider this an endorsement of the Geek Squad, but it's based on a single experience. Anyway, I was pleased.
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A brief not about some hockey happenings last night. There was a night filled with eleven games played and three of them turned out to be remarkable, so I am remarking on them. First of all, going into the evening the Washington Capitals were the only team in the league that was still undefeated as they arrived in Edmonton to play the Oilers. They are undefeated no more as the young and developing Oilers won the game 2-1.
At the other end of the standings list, one of the weakest teams in the league, the Winnipeg Jets traveled to Philadelphia to take on one of the strongest teams in the league. Instead of a blowout, the Philly fans saw their home team score an impressive eight goals and still lost the game, 8-9. It is a rare occurrence for an NHL team to score 8 goals in a game, but it's usually a lop-sided contest. To score 8 times and still lose is unheard of. Until now.
Even more quirky than that was the game in Pittsburgh where the visiting New York Islanders lost to the Penquins in an overtime shootout. The Isles' goaltender took ill during the overtime period of the game, so the backup goalie Rick DiPietro stepped in to play net during the shootout. The shootout is counted as non-playing time because the clock does not run after the overtime period is complete. Pittsburgh won the tie-breaker shootout and poor DiPietro got the loss without even showing up on the scoreheet as playing in the game.
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We had better show up and take care of our scoresheets now and get this equipment checked out. I'll get more coffee ready before we meet back in the day room. Then we can watch this video that shows all 17 goals scored in a single game last night:
ERSTWHILE GEEZERGUY ERIC LAMAR has got the bug and gone off on his own, starting up a new blog and wisely joining the FireEMS Blogs family. His new publication is called Turnout (http://turnoutblog.com/), an easy name to remember.
We have no doubt that his usual high standards that cause you to think twice about his topic will carry on with this endeavor. Take a look at his fresh start and bookmark the address. You will benefit and enjoy his postings, I'm sure. Welcome and good luck, Eric!
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