Sex history up in flames: The best I can tell from reading translated websites, this was at one time Osorno, Chile’s most famous brothel. Vacant for a number of years it used to be known as “The White Elephant”. Click here for another video that shows firefighters mounting an interior attack.
Tragedy in Connecticut reaches to Prince George’s County: Over the weekend we reported on the deaths of Lt. Steven Velasquez and Firefighter Michael Baik at a Saturday fire in Bridgeport. The latest article has fire officials bringing up the possibility the pair ran out of air as they called a mayday. We have the dispatch audio here. Lt. Velazquez had been a career firefighter in Prince George’s County, Maryland where he still had a number of good friends. Click here for that story.
Security guard as firefighter didn’t work out so good: In Utica, New York Saturday night firefighters arriving at a State of New York State office building for an automatic alarm were waved off by the security guard who said it was just another malfunctioning alarm. There had been several in the last week. The firefighters were heading back to the station when they were redispatched for a fire in the computer room that did significant damage. Read more from UticaOD.com.
Backdraft in Tempe, Arizona?: Fire officials say the firefighters were very lucky the injuries to three firefighters were minor during a fire in a 1940s house Sunday morning. Some are describing it as a backdraft that blew a firefighter out a door, split a block header, broke casement windows, and damaged the front door. Here’s more.
Firefighter wins residency battle: A hearing officer agrees that Michael Ortiz is following the rules that he live in Lynn, Massachusetts. But Ortiz has other issues to deal with in efforts to keep his job. Read the details.
Firehouse Expo: It was great seeing lots of people in Baltimore. If you scroll through Firegeezer, The Fire Critic and Fire Daily you will see some of the antics in Booth 738. You can also hear some of them on Firefighter Netcast. FossilMedic Mike Ward also writes about the controversy over the damage done a year earlier at the city’s Hilton Hotel adjacent to the Convention Center. Also, thanks to our good friend Mike Legeros for his usual wonderful pictures (like the one to the right).
Helping firefighters cope: At Firehouse Expo on Friday, as part of my work at the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation, I sat in on the briefing by Kansas City, Missouri’s Richard Gist on the new ways to help firefighters deal with potentially traumatic events. If you have the opportunity to see this at Fire Rescue International or elsewhere, do so. It is a lot less clinical than you would imagine and further makes the case that one size doesn’t fit all. Dr. Gist, with the help of Vickie Taylor of Prince William County, Virginia, lays out a fairly direct and uncomplicated plan for fire departments to move in this direction. Glenn Smith writes about it in Charleston’s Post & Courier.
