Raw video of Boston close call; Mayor threatens UN; 65 dogs & cats in VA fire; MD fire raw video; Fire saves man; Old Lady in septic tank
Rescues in Boston and a close call
Click here for a lot more raw video and links to the best coverage of the Monday afternoon fire. Some of the video was taken as the first firefighters arrived.
Mayor threatens to cut tours by school children if UN doesn’t fix fire code violations
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has threatened to keep school children from visiting the United Nations unless the world body upgrades its fire and emergency plans by early next year.
The 17-acre complex has corrected only 20 percent of the 866 violations found during an inspection by the city’s Fire Department six months ago, the mayor said in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in an Oct. 30 letter.
Bloomberg said that despite regular meetings between the city and Under-Secretary-General for Management Alicia Barcena, “the results are not satisfactory because to a large extent these conditions continue to exist.”
In a Nov. 5 response, Barcena said that 40 percent of the violations had already been addressed, and that the U.N. was continuing to work to meet the city’s deadlines.
The mayor outlined a number of steps and deadlines _ set for early next year _ that the 55-year-old complex must meet to protect the public’s safety, including the installation of additional smoke detectors.
Or so it may have seemed for some Northern Virginia firefighters. The fire itself, on Monday afternoon, wasn’t all that much. Just part of a living room at a home on Jefferson Avenue in Fairfax County’s Station 418’s first due. But the occupants made it interesting. Fifty dogs, 15 cats and a parrot. Five of the cats died and one of the human occupants was injured trying to save the animals. You can see my story, here and our 11:00 p.m. follow-up, here.
A six unit apartment building was destroyed in Norwich, CT on Monday morning. An interior attack was abandoned after conditions worsened. Three firefighters and a civilian were hospitalized. Details, here.
The video above is from a Monday afternoon fire in Wellington, Ohio. A furniture warehouse was destroyed. Some more details, here.
Above, a house fire early Monday morning in Hempstead. From BillBennettPhoto.com.
PA women
A video (above) of still pictures from the Fire Service Women of Pennsylvania from 2007 conference.
Gas leak halts newscast
In Austin, Texas, people expected to watch the 10:00 p.m. news on KAAL-TV saw an episode of “Scrubs” instead. Here is the story on the evacuation of the TV station.
“What, and give up show business?” — the latest example to illustrate that classic punch line
From Liberty, Texas (above), firefighters were called to pull an old lady out of a septic tank. Actually, “Old Lady” is the name of a 27-year-old horse. Who else but firefighters would take on a job like that one?
