A HELENA, MONTANA, WOMAN IS IN CRITICAL CONDITION with a serious head trauma after her mini-van was struck by a fire engine Thursday afternoon.

The engine from the West Valley VFD was responding to a grass fire when, according to Montana State Police, the woman drove through a stop sign into the path of the fire truck which had its lights and siren activated.

Both drivers were wearing seat belts, but the engine driver suffered a broken hand.

The Helena Record has the STORY.

A WYANDOT COUNTY, OHIO, FIRE ENGINE WAS RESPONDING to an auto fire inside an attached garage Monday night when it left the roadway and rolled over.

The driver, Richard L. Kear, 58, was ejected from the truck and died at the hospital about two hours later.  The only other FF on board was only slightly injured and was able to start first-aid on Kear while waiting for EMS to arrive.

Chief Goldfeder at FirefighterCloseCalls is keeping current with the story HERE.

AT THE SIX FLAGS AMUSEMENT PARK NEAR ATLANTA, GEORGIA, Saturday, a 17-yr.-old boy was killed when he was struck by the Batman Coaster inside a restricted area.

The Batman ride carries the passengers
upside-down through a series of
inverted loops.  (AJC photo)

The teen and another boy had left the park earlier in the day to buy some lunch outside.  Instead of returning through the entrance gate, they climbed over the park’s security fence in another area.  Once inside, they then climbed  a safety fence that surrounds the ride, even though it is plainly marked with Danger and No Trespassing signs. 

There is speculation that he was looking to retrieve a hat that he had lost earlier while riding the coaster.  While climbing around the coaster ride, the cars came by at about 50 mph and struck the youth killing him instantly by decapitation.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the full STORY.

The AP filed this video report:

THE U.S. CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION HAS JUST issued a recall of the following item:

Crafters Square Hot Melt Mini Glue Guns

This item from China was imported by Greenbriar International Inc. and distributed by Dollar Tree Stores Inc.  The recall involves about 253,000 of the cheap-o glue guns which were being sold at Dollar Tree, Dollar Bill$, Dollar Express, Greenbacks, Only One $1, and Deal$ stores nationwide from February 2007 through August 2007 for about $1.

The glue guns dispense hot glue and are intended for craft projects. The recalled glue gun is black with a yellow trigger and is approximately 4 1/2 inches from the back of the gun to the tip. Attached is a 44-inch electrical cord. “Crafters Square” and product number 818261-72 or 818261-75 are located on the guns’ packaging.

The recalled glue guns can short circuit, causing the gun to smoke and catch fire. This poses fire, burn and shock hazards to consumers.  Dollar Tree is aware of seven incidents in which these glue guns short circuited resulting in two injuries, including electrical shock and burns.

Firegeezer is well aware that people in the fire and rescue service are smart enough to know that an electrical appliance that sells for one dollar isn’t going to be very reliable.  But we are often called into other people’s houses who aren’t quite that sharp.  We’re providing this information to help you in your “smell of something burning” calls.

THE ONTARIO PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT announced that beginning in April, 2010, all newly-built apartment and condo buildings higher than 3 stories will have to be sprinklered.

API Group photo

This will bring the provincial building code closer to the levels found in the rest of Canada.  “The experience of other jurisdictions across North America is clear: Residential sprinklers reduce injuries, deaths and property loss due to fire,” says Pat Burke, Fire Marshal of Ontario.

Richard Boyes, president of the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs, said that “Ultimately, we would like to see sprinklers being made mandatory in all new residential units including single-family dwellings, townhouses and low-rise buildings.”

Boyes said Vancouver and Scottsdale, Ariz., both require sprinklers in all residential buildings and there hasn’t been a single fire fatality in either municipality since they mandated them 18 and 22 years ago respectively.

CTV has the STORY.

IN WALES SUNDAY A FIRE ENGINE FROM THE NORTH WALES Fire and Rescue Service was involved in a collision with an auto while responding to another wreck.

There were six firefighters on board the engine from the Aberdyfi station when it crashed and rolled over, injuring two of the FF’s. 

BBC News

A North Wales Fire and Rescue Service spokeswoman said: “Two firefighters have been transferred by ambulance to hospital – one suffering from head injuries and one from leg injuries. It is believed that the people travelling in the car were treated for shock by paramedics at the scene.”

The accident that they were responding to involved a car that was left teetering over a railway embankment.

The North Wales Daily Post has the full STORY.

FATAL FALLS FROM TOWERS OF ALL KINDS, water, communications, electric, in the U. S. totalled 10 in number last year.

This year there were none for the first three months, then over a span of 5 weeks there were 6 deaths on cell-phone towers alone.  Five of them were during a 12-day span and half of the six were AT&T contractors.

Wireless Estimator photo

A lot of people are speculating that AT&T has been pressuring the tower workers to work faster in order to meet a June deadline for enhanced service capability for Apple’s iPhone project.

Fortune Magazine reports:

On May 21, AT&T issued a press release describing its $20 billion roll-out of a nationwide 3G network. It promised to have 275 of the markets it serves in the U.S. 3G-ready by the end of June, and to finish the remaining 75 by the end of the year.  AT&T is the exclusive U.S. carrier for Apple’s iPhone. A new, 3G version of that device is widely expected to be released in June.

A spokesman for AT&T Mobile confirms that Jonathan Guilford was working on a tower for an AT&T 3G network, but denies that his death or the others had anything to do with the June deadline. “That is a software upgrade,” says William Marks. “You go to each tower and use a laptop to perform the upgrade at the base station at the bottom of the tower. There is no need to climb towers.”

What he didn’t say, however, is that the workers have to climb the towers to trouble-shoot any problems.  After all, they were up there before they fell.

Read the complete Fortune Magazine article HERE.

THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE TULSA, OKLAHOMA, fire engine rollover Tuesday (Firegeezer report HERE) concludes that speed was a factor leading up to the accident but a dip in the road is what caused the truck to go out of control.

Tulsa World

The driver told police that he hit a dip in the road which caused him to lose control and then it started to roll. The front tires lifted off the ground, and the truck went sideways before overturning and striking the poles and the pickup, he said.

A witness said that it went into the northbound lane before going back across the road and hitting the guardrail on the west side of the road. After it hit the guardrail it then struck two utility poles, a stop sign and a pickup that was parked in a driveway.

The Tulsa World has the STORY.

Channel 23 has a brief video report:

 

TAKING AUTOMOBILE CRASH TESTS TO NEW LEVELS, THE SAAB auto division of General Motors ran a series of tests using human cadavers for the “passengers.”

Claes Tingvall, a car safety specialist with the Swedish Road Administration, told the newspaper Expressen that GM recently finished a multi-year research project in which dead human bodies were used.  He said that for certain things, only real human bodies will suffice.  However, he stressed that they only used bodies that had been donated by the people themselves before they died.

Tingvall explained that the cadavers were also used in experiments that helped in the development of better crash test dummies.  (That’s what he said, folks. - ed.)

The Swedish online paper The Local has the STORY.

AN EARLY-MORNING FIRE SATURDAY IN ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND, has left three Montgomery County firefighters in the Washington, D. C. burn unit.

The fire was on the second floor of a 3-story garden apartment building and was fatal to the sole occupant of the unit. 

The firefighters were on the third story when the floor gave way dropping them into the fire apartment.  They managed to get over to a window where they jumped out of the building.

WUSA Channel 9’s Dave Statter is reporting the fire and keeping his website STATter911 updated with the latest HERE.

Chief Billy Goldfeder has passed along the following:

The IAFC Safety, Health and Survival Section along with FFCC has been asked to assist NIOSH in researching of any factual details related to catastrophic malfunctions or failures of aerial ladder waterways, within the past 30 years. If you have any case specific details and contact information, please advise.

Just send along your contact information to us and we will pass it along just as soon as we find out the right address.  The two key points to note are “waterways” and “past 30 years.”

Thanks,
Firegeezer

 Updated, scroll down.

AN EARLY REPORT FROM THE MELBOURNE HERALD-SUN TELLS:

A Country Fire Authority volunteer is believed to have suffered serious injuries after a fire tanker rolled and collided with a semi-trailor north of Melbourne and then rolled over.

The crash happened on the south-bound lanes of the Hume Fwy at Clonbinane, near Kilmore, about 12.20pm.

A Victoria Police spokesperson said the driver of the fire truck, from the Wallan CFA brigade, was being airlifted to Melbourne with what was believed to be serious injuries.  Update:  A spokesman for The Alfred hospital said the man was in a serious but stable condition.   The driver of the semi-truck was not injured.

Reported from  The Age.