VIDEO - Three generations of Columbus Fire Fighters, all privileged to wear the same badge. For the Smith family, Columbus Fire badge number 220 was held by Lauren “Grandpa” Smith Sr., since 1948. Years later Lauren Smith Jr., would join the force in 1988. His father passed on the badge to him in 1989.
- PUB DATE: 1/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WCMH-TV NBC 4 Columbus

The Newbury Park fire station on West Hillcrest Drive was evacuated Thursday evening after a resident brought mercury into the building, officials said. Capt. Ron Oatman, a spokesman for Ventura County Fire, said a resident had vacuumed up mercury after a spill at a storage facility and brought the vacuum bag to the station mistakenly believing firefighters could dispose of the toxic liquid metal.
- PUB DATE: 1/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Ventura County Star

President Barack Obama began meeting with prominent Democrats in early January to develop a strategy to keep his signature domestic policy, the Affordable Care Act, intact in the hands of a new administration. Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Republican Congressional leaders have been strategizing and meeting since the election to develop an alternative to the ACA.
- PUB DATE: 1/20/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: EMS1

A firefighter died Tuesday morning from a type of cancer that he likely got because of his job, according to colleagues. Jimmy Hendryx, 47, is Bremerton's first firefighter to die in the line of duty in the history of the department, which stretches back 114 years. Hendrix was an avid bag pipes player, and would often perform at memorials for fallen firefighters and police officers.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KOMO-TV ABC 4 and Radio 1000

Maine firefighters are missing out on a training opportunity at the National Fire Academy this year because the state is not in compliance with a decade-old federal ID law regulating state-issued driver’s licenses. Maine is among 23 states and five U.S. territories not in compliance with the Real ID Act, and the Legislature in 2007 passed a law prohibiting the state from complying with law amid concerns that it would create a de facto “internal passport.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Bangor Daily News

A high-rise building in Tehran engulfed by a fire collapsed on Thursday, killing at least 30 firefighters and injuring some 75 people, state media reported. The disaster struck the Plasco building, an iconic structure in central Tehran just north of the capital's sprawling bazaar. Iran's state-run Press TV announced the firefighters' deaths, without giving a source for the information.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: New York Daily News

Martin Pang, the arsonist who set the deadliest blaze in the Seattle Fire Department’s history, will have to pay nearly $3 million in restitution and other legal costs when he’s released from prison, according to an opinion published Tuesday by the state Court of Appeals. Pang, who is serving a 35-year prison sentence for setting a massive warehouse fire in January 1995 that killed four firefighters in the Chinatown International District, filed a motion in King County Superior Court in August 2015 seeking relief from his legal financial obligations, known as LFOs.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Seattle Times

The city paid three Providence fire captains more than $200,000 each in 2016 and paid a total of 220 firefighters more than $100,000 apiece during the same period. Fire rescue Capt. Vincent J. D'Ambra had the biggest payout, $243,000, according to a Providence Journal analysis of the Fire Department's payroll, apparently making him the highest-paid employee on the city's payroll.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Providence Journal

Unified Fire Authority officials should seek criminal investigations of their former chief and deputy chief for a dozen potential violations and attempt to get half a million dollars in reimbursement from them and three other former fire department administrators, said two state audits released Wednesday.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Salt Lake Tribune

President Barack Obama began meeting with prominent Democrats in early January to develop a strategy to keep his signature domestic policy, the Affordable Care Act, intact in the hands of a new administration. Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Republican Congressional leaders have been strategizing and meeting since the election to develop an alternative to the ACA.
- PUB DATE: 1/19/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: EMS1

A Tea family of six is now homeless after a devastating fire Sunday morning. Fortunately, they still have each other as no one was seriously hurt in the blaze. However, Tea Volunteer Fire First Assistant Chief Steven Oberle said there was a scary moment after a firefighter fell through the floor of the burning home.
- PUB DATE: 1/18/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KDLT-TV Sioux Falls

Four children were hospitalized in critical condition Tuesday morning after being rescued from a burning home in the Vermont Knolls neighborhood of South Los Angeles. Firefighters found the front of the home in the 800 block of West Manchester Avenue heavily involved with flames when they arrived about 10:51 p.
- PUB DATE: 1/18/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: KTLA-TV WB 5 Los Angeles

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent Cassius Cash said a team that will review the forest fires that spread from the park into Gatlinburg and beyond has been activated and “should be here in the next week or two.” Fed by near-hurricane-force winds, the flames swept through Sevier County on Nov.
- PUB DATE: 1/18/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Knoxville News Sentinel

The final judgment in a long-awaited civil lawsuit against the Trenton Fire Department was released last week, ordering the city to pay nearly $1 million in damages and fees, according to the court document. The judgment stems from a 2014 lawsuit filed by former firefighter Jesse Diaz, who alleged that he overheard a racial slur made by a co-worker of his at the department in 2012.
- PUB DATE: 1/18/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Trenton Times

The Kern County Administrative Office has delayed, for now, a plan to reduce staffing at nine largely rural fire stations after the Kern County Firefighters union objected. "The union requested a 'meet and confer' on the staffing adjustment late last Friday afternoon. We've temporarily delayed implementation due to their request," County Administrative Officer Ryan Alsop said in an email Monday.
- PUB DATE: 1/18/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Bakersfield.com

The goal of the SAFER grant program is to assist local fire departments with staffing and deployment capabilities to respond to emergencies and to assure that communities have adequate protection from fire and fire-related hazards. Local fire departments accomplish this by improving staffing and deployment capabilities so they may more effectively and safely respond to emergencies.
- PUB DATE: 1/18/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: FireRescue1

The Mt. Olive Volunteer Fire Department confirms their fire chief Tracy O. Sanders, 44, has passed away following a wreck near Mudd Street and Highway 77 near Ohatchee Friday afternoon. Sanders was in a truck when she trying to turn left off of Highway 77 and her vehicle was struck from behind by a tractor trailer.
- PUB DATE: 1/17/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: WMC-TV Action News5

An unimaginable tragedy struck in a small community of a few dozen homes on Long Key Road in the Florida Keys Monday morning, when three workers from a private contractor tasked with fixing a roadway climbed into a hole in the ground and, ultimately, to their deaths. By the time a Key Largo firefighter climbed into the same hole near Lake Surprise in a desperate attempt to save the men, they were dead.
- PUB DATE: 1/17/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: Miami Herald

The Sept. 24 fire in a Canby Park rowhome will go down in Wilmington as one of the most traumatic events in city history. The tragedy ultimately took the lives of three firefighters and injured four more, leaving the department and community reeling. In the days that followed, city officials realized they had another "very serious" problem, said Mayor Mike Purzycki.
- PUB DATE: 1/17/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: USA Today

Dogs have long been used to sniff out drugs and bugs and even bombs! But can these furry friends also identify the smell of cancer? A special program in San Antonio has been designed to help protect some of our most vulnerable heroes, firefighters. "Everything a firefighter does is a calculated risk," San Antonio firefighter Joe Arrington said.
- PUB DATE: 1/17/2017 12:00:00 AM - SOURCE: CW39 Houston