FirstNet board members today voted unanimously to authorize FirstNet CEO Mike Poth to finalize the 25-year contract this week—an award to AT&T, although the carrier was not mentioned during the special board meeting—to build and maintain the nationwide public-safety broadband network (NPSBN).
“This is a very, very special day,” FirstNet Chairwoman Sue Swenson said during the board meeting. - PUB DATE: 3/29/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Urgent Communications
A recent "forensic audit" ordered by the selectmen and conducted by the town account found nothing substantial against Fire Chief Peter Martell. He had been placed on paid administrative leave for 10 weeks awaiting the results of the audit. On Jan. 10, Chief Martell was chastised for spending $33,814 of town money, funds approved by town meeting, for a 2017 Ford Expedition without consulting selectmen and for submitting an electric bill from his home address along with two Fire Department bills. - PUB DATE: 3/29/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Worcester Telegram & Gazette
Palo Alto’s four battalion fire chiefs will get pay raises of 15.5 percent under a labor deal the City Council approved Monday.
Three council members, Eric Filseth, Lydia Kou and Greg Tanaka, objected to the raises.
Filseth commended the Fire Department’s good work, but characterized the raises as “excessive” especially because of escalating fire service costs. - PUB DATE: 3/29/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Mercury News
Fire officials across Ohio are backing a proposal by Gov. John Kasich to abolish the industry-controlled agency that regulates manufactured homes, saying the commission does too little to protect manufactured home residents from deadly fires.
The Ohio Fire Chief’s Association last week sent a letter to Ohio lawmakers expressing support for a provision in the state budget that would do away with the Manufactured Homes Commission and fold its responsibilities into the Ohio Department of Commerce. - PUB DATE: 3/29/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Dayton Daily News
A firefighter was assaulted by a man while on the scene of a travel trailer fire just north of Tulsa early Wednesday.
The man was identified as 48-year-old Michael Fisher.
The incident happened in the 6200 block of North Wheeling at around 3 a.m.
The Turley Fire Department was called to the fire involving a 5th wheel trailer being used for storage. - PUB DATE: 3/29/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KOTV-TV CBS 6 Tulsa
People were hanging out windows and running barefoot for their lives early Monday morning as a fire raged through a three-story West Oakland residential building with a history of complaints, killing at least three people and sending another four to the hospital, authorities said.
Three were confirmed dead and one was still unaccounted for on Monday night, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office. - PUB DATE: 3/28/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: East Bay Times
Milan or Hartford? That was the choice Reginald Freeman was faced with when the job of Hartford fire chief was offered to him more than a year ago.
"I was poised to go to Italy for 14 months," said Freeman, who was the fire chief of Lockheed Martin's aeronautic headquarters in Ft. Worth, Texas, at the time. - PUB DATE: 3/28/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Hartford Courant
More than half of firefighters' line-of-duty deaths are caused not by external dangers such as flames or building collapses, but from cardiovascular reactions to the physical stress of the job, experts say.
Hanover Park Fire Chief Craig Haigh believes his department can help bring down those numbers as the main test subjects of a 21-month national research project. - PUB DATE: 3/28/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Daily Herald
The chief of the Lake Arrowhead, TX, Volunteer Fire Department said his worst nightmare came true this weekend when he received a call that his fire station was on fire Saturday night. Fire Chief Mike Hall was just two bites into dinner when his cell phone rang around 7 p.m.
"The ambulance crew called and asked 'Are you alright?' and I asked why and they told me the fire station is on fire," Hall said. - PUB DATE: 3/28/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Firehouse
Several people were arrested and detained Friday after a Clayton County firefighter found his stolen car at an alleged chop shop, Channel 2 Action News reported.
The firefighter’s car was stolen outside Fire Station No. 1 in Morrow, where he works. He used an app to find his car, the news station reported. - PUB DATE: 3/28/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Knights Valley resident Bud Pochini runs his welding business, owns a Christmas tree farm and helps coach high school softball. And for the past 25 years, he has been a mainstay of the Knights Valley Fire Co. volunteers.
Fallen trees, neighbors’ medical emergencies, car crashes. Some of the calls are so grim the assistant fire chief wonders why he sticks with it. - PUB DATE: 3/28/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Petaluma Argus Courier
The city of Charleston has a plan in the works to create a new Department of Public Safety to oversee the police and fire departments, and Police Chief Greg Mullen could be promoted to lead it.
The concept was announced in a written release Friday.
Next week, Tecklenburg plans to ask the City Council's Public Safety Committee to study the feasibility of such a department. - PUB DATE: 3/27/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Post and Courier
The treasurer of the Akron firefighters union has been charged with felony theft and is in jail in North Carolina, arrested as he fled Akron after the charges were filed on Thursday.
Joe Ruhlin, 40, treasurer of Local 330, is accused of stealing perhaps as much as $100,000 from the union. The exact figure has not been determined because the union and investigators have just begun combing the books. - PUB DATE: 3/27/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Akron Beacon Journal
The city has agreed to a $250,000 settlement in a lawsuit by a volunteer firefighter accusing Lynden and its assistant fire chief of discrimination and creating a hostile work environment.
Damon Winters, a volunteer firefighter, filed the lawsuit against the city and Assistant Chief Robert Spinner in U. - PUB DATE: 3/27/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Bellingham Herald
A fire on Sunday morning destroyed a three-story building that was home to a diner and apartments in Butler. Emergency dispatchers said the fire was reported shortly after 9 a.m. at a building on Center Avenue that houses Hutch's diner and two floors of apartments.
One firefighter was reported caught in a flashover by the rapidly spreading flames and exited through a window and onto the roof of a neighboring building, where other firefighters helped him to safety. - PUB DATE: 3/27/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WTAE-TV ABC 4 Pittsburgh
Firefighters at Fort Bragg’s Fire Station No. 7 have been complaining for years that their building is deplorable — even sickening.
The roof leaks. Exhaust from the engine trucks wafts into sleeping quarters. Carpets are soaked with water when it rains. Holes in walls are covered by steel sheets. The problems have been documented by building inspectors, federal occupational safety regulators and Fort Bragg leaders since at least 2014, yet the building continues to fall into disrepair. - PUB DATE: 3/27/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Fayetteville Observer
She was blue when her neighbor found her at lunchtime, unconscious and slumped in an overstuffed leather chair.
Minutes later, her studio apartment is crammed with people in uniform who have been summoned to save her. Getting there after the 911 call had been excruciating, even with light afternoon traffic: an 11-block drive with sirens wailing, followed by a cramped ride in a slim elevator that crept slowly toward the ninth floor, as if powered by AAA batteries. - PUB DATE: 3/24/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Seattle Times
A construction worker called 911 as he frantically honked his horn to warn other workers away from a fire at an unfinished apartment building in Overland Park — one of 69 calls reporting a massive blaze and flaming embers raining down on nearby homes.
The 911 dispatch recordings, released to The Kansas City Star on Thursday, reveal workers’ and residents’ frantic pleas for firefighters. - PUB DATE: 3/24/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Kansas City Star
Pushback from Belle Haven residents forced Menlo Park’s fire district to drop a plan to seize two residential properties to expand its station.
About 50 residents packed Tuesday night’s meeting of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, held inside a small classroom at its 300 Middlefield Road fire station. - PUB DATE: 3/24/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Mercury News
A fire chief in Kansas finds himself the target of anger and frustration over, of all things, stickers. Sedgwick County certainly isn’t the first fire department to wrestle with a "stickergate" controversy. I’m guessing most departments have had at least one.
That helmet and apparatus decals could set off a department-wide dust up is not surprising. - PUB DATE: 3/24/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: FireRescue1
