Trains collide in MA; To-go meal costs FF his job; Raided firehouse voted out; Plywood plant fire spreads; STATter 911 Archives quiz
(Updated at 7:28 PM)
A STATter 911 Archives quiz: Who are these men and why aren’t they smiling? For the answer, scroll to the bottom of this entry.
Breaking news: Commuter trains collide in MA
The top one is from NECN. Click to play. At the bottom is a WHDH-TV image
It’s a bad day for Green Lines. First, there was a derailment this morning on the CTA Green Line in Chicago (scroll down).
Now, from Newton, MA, two commuter trains have collided on the MBTA Green Line. At 7:30 PM, looking at a live feed from my desk at WBZ-TV’s helicopter shots, it appears there is still extrication going on at the head end of one of the trains. The crash apparently occurred just before 6:00 PM.
One train ran into the rear of another. They were both west bound, heading away from Boston. There has been at least one person flown on a medevac helicopter.
Watch live chopper from WFXT-TV
Click here for WBZ-TV’s coverage
Excerpts below from Boston.com:
A trolley car on the D branch of the Green Line smashed into another car from behind this afternoon, injuring multiple people. The operator of one the trolleys is still trapped, the MBTA said.
The operator’s injuries “appear to be very serious,” said Joe Pesaturo, spokesman for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Pesaturo said one two-car trolley rear-ended the second as both headed westbound, away from Boston.
The collision occurred on the way into the Woodland station. The trolley that was rear-ended was just emerging from a scheduled stop-light when it was hit from behind, he said. The operator who was trapped was the one in the train in the rear, Pesaturo said.
Because it was during rush hour, just before 6 p.m., passenger volume was heavy, he said.
Aerial pictures of the scene shown by local TV stations showed smashed trolley cars, rescue vehicles clustering at the scene, Medflight helicopters landing on a nearby golf course, and injured people being placed on stretchers.
Loudoun update
The only new information from Loudoun County officials is the firefighter still in the burn unit remains in serious, but stable condition.
Click here to see our previous coverage of Sunday’s fire.
CTA derailment with injuries
There are reports of 24 people injured when a Chicago Transit Authority train derail this morning on the Green Line. The injuries are reported to be minor.
Lieutenant out to lunch is now out of a job
When every second counts, two-minutes can be a long time. That’s how long Austin, Texas officials say the delay was when Lieutenant Michael Pooler picked up his food from a restaurant on January 4 instead of immediately responding to a woman suffering respiratory distress at a local clinic. Here are excerpts from an article at statesman.com:
Before jumping onto an Austin firetruck and rushing to a woman in respiratory distress earlier this year, officials say, firefighter Michael Pooler decided to make a quick stop.
He went to the Burger House next door.
The food run delayed the Austin Fire Department’s response to the call by two minutes and led acting Fire Chief Jim Evans to fire Pooler.
Evans said in a disciplinary memo released Tuesday that Pooler demonstrated “a shocking neglect of duty” in the Jan. 4 incident.
“Immediate response to 911 calls is the very essence of what it means to be an Austin firefighter. … Because of his selfish and highly unprofessional actions, he has no right to remain an Austin firefighter,” the memo said.
Fire Department spokeswoman Michelle DeCrane said paramedics from Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services reached the patient before firefighters and canceled the firefighter response.
The patient’s condition is not known.
DeCrane said the 911 call originated from an Austin Regional Clinic near Far West Boulevard and MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1). In an audio recording of the call, a clinic employee told a dispatcher that the patient was a 77-year-old woman who was having difficulty talking and breathing at the same time.
Pooler, a 12-year veteran of the Fire Department, declined through a union representative to comment on the firing, which happened after a hearing Friday. He does not have an attorney, said Palmer Buck, secretary for the Austin Association of Professional Firefighters.
Buck said Pooler plans to appeal the firing.
Raided PA fire company voted out
The latest on the Colwyn Fire Department, whose riding members walked out after the social club side was raided by state officials. Tuesday night, the Colwyn Boro Council voted to get rid of its own fire department. The department has been around for 105 years.
Click here to read the story and watch video of the tense meeting.
Another version o
f the story is here.
The great escape
A family in California’s Santa Cruz Mountains decides it’s time to go. While it’s easy to be judgmental, sitting in safety on the other side of the country, it appears this family really doesn’t have a clue. Here, we tell people to have an escape plan from your house. There, they need an escape plan from the community. The young boy seems to have it most together, urging his parents to quit fooling around and just leave.
FireGeezer has been following the fires.
Worst fires ever in Prince George, B.C. and a close call for FFs
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6vRx7iGQwo&hl=en]
Click here for Vancouver Sun article
Click here for video of still images
A fire in a plywood plant Monday evening sent embers that burned at least two other buildings in Prince George, B.C. There was also a close call for firefighters who made the initial attack. Excerpts from the Prince George Citizen:
Prince George Fire Chief Jeff Rowland said conditions were just right for the largest fire in Prince George history at Canfor’s North Central Plywoods mill in the BCR Site.
“It’s a huge building and there’s a lot of sawdust, and it’s just right for a fire to take off,” Rowland said Tuesday. “We thought we had the fire controlled. I was in the building about a minute before it took off. It was clear, we knew where the fire was, and the guys that were on the roof said a minute later the fire rolled out both ends of the building. In two minutes we had to get nine people off that roof.
“Captain Mark Hill, noting the roof was comprised of different layers of various materials, said the situation was “a bit scary,” both for the Canfor employees who started fighting the fire, and for the 16 Prince George firefighters in attendance.
Hill and the crew thought they contained the blaze after cutting a trench in the roof, a procedure he said stops fires nine times out of 10. This time, however, the flames got behind them. “As the roof fell in in front of us it also started to fall in behind us,” said Hill, who likened the noise to a “jet engine taking off.”
We lost some gear, we just dropped everything and ran. The assistant chief was the last guy, I was the second last guy. We made sure everybody was off and safe. We were lucky we had an escape route.
“The 16-year firefighting veteran credits the crew for working hard, long hours. “It’s what we train for. I know it’s (matter of life and death) probably in the back of the mind of every firefighter. It’s just one of those things you really don’t have time to think about. You make sure what you’ve trained for all these years is put into practice and you make sure everybody goes home safe at the end of the day.
City clean-up crew does the job and lets the FFs clean-up
That isn’t your standard issue fire hose. And these Tampa employees aren’t members of the fire department. They are part of the Clean City Department.
The two were driving around in their 2500-gallon tanker and heard a woman screaming on Tuesday morning. She was screaming because the Alamo Hotel was on fire. The men grabbed the line and went to work. They are credited with keeping the fire from spreading through the single-story building.
The answer to the STATter 911 Archives quiz
The answer as to why those men weren’t smiling is that they had been offered jobs with the Prince George’s County Fire Department and then were told never mind. The article is from January 26, 1978. It is interesting reading.
The problem was the racial make-up of the class. Twenty-two white males in a county that was then 25% black. In the end, they got their jobs.
The good news is that Prince George’s County learned its lesson and never again made the mistake of offering jobs to a class of recruits and then rescinding the offers. In fact, if you read this article by Eugene L. Meyer, you will see that County Executive Winfield Kelly said, “This will never happen again in Prince George’s County”. Wrong!
Well, at least they waited 22-years before another county executive gave a similar order. At that point, if my memory is correct, one of the members of the 1978 class had become fire chief.
To read more about the 2000-2001 case, click here and here. In each, you will have to scroll down to the article heading Fire Department. They are in alphabetical order.
