If a fire broke out in your home in the middle of the night, would you know what to do or where to go, and do you have an escape plan? An Anchorage woman had to face all of that but says it was the preparation that saved her family's life. "This was my Mercedes, it use to be blue and had windows," said Tara Cowen describing what's left of her snow-covered burned car. One by one, Cowen pointed out what was left of her two-story home. "My bed is right down there by the steel cabinet," she said. Charred pieces of wood and broken pipes, all covered in snow. "That's the bed the grandkids were in," she added. Cowen tried to assess what she could of the home she'd lived in for the last 40 years. "You sort of mourn it one item at a time as it floats up out of the fog. My garden gloves are gone, my jewelry is gone, books I was reading that were on my nightstand are gone," said Cowen.  

VIDEO: Colleen Walz shattered the glass ceiling to become the first female lieutenant in the Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire in 1995. Last week, Kari Burnham was honored in a ceremony as the second woman to hold the position. Burnham said, "This is something I love to do. It's like a dream come true." But why did it take decades for another woman to rise in the ranks? Pittsburgh Bureau of Fire chief Darryl Jones said, "It was an embarrassment not only that it took so long to promote a female to the rank of lieutenant to a company officer, but the number of females that we have on the job is way below the national average." He said there are five female firefighters, including one African American woman in the bureau. At one time, Jones worked with Walz, who is now the fire chief in St. John's Fire District in South Carolina.  

The public information officer for the Chesterfield Fire Company has been charged in connection with crash scene photos he took without permission and posted to his agency's Facebook page last month, according to an arrest warrant. Steven E. Frischling, 45, of Carriage Hill Drive in Niantic, was charged with two counts of illegally taking or transmission by first responders of images of crime or accident victims, according to a warrant for his arrest. Someone convicted of this offense faces a fine of up to $2,000, up to one year in jail or both, according to statute. "It was genuinely surprising," Frischling told Hearst Connecticut Media on Thursday regarding his arrest. Frischling, who is still actively serving in his PIO role with no changes to his duties or responsibilities, said he's very familiar with the law and does not believe he violated it.  

VIDEO: A doctor performed a field amputation on a worker who became ensnared in a conveyor belt at an iron company in Oklahoma City. The emergency situation occurred Thursday afternoon in the 1500 block of East Reno, near Reno and Martin Luther King Avenue. The worker's hand became caught in a conveyor belt, suffering extreme injury and could not be freed without an amputation being performed. A doctor amputated much of the man's arm – near the shoulder – to free him from the machine. No further details were provided on the man's condition.  

After years of minimal staffing and low budgets, Hopedale's fire chief said this week that he has found a way to double the town's number of firefighters at no cost to taxpayers. "The runs are coming in, the staffing isn't," Fire Chief Thomas Daige told selectmen this week, referring to emergency calls that need firefighters and EMTs. "You know this, I know this, we've been trying to find a way to add staffing." The chief's solution is called inter-facility transports, and it involves patients who require medical transportation from the hospital back to their homes or assisted living facilities. Because the transportation is required, Hopedale will typically be paid for the rides through insurance plans. Daige said he's been trying to secure inter-facility transports for years, and just recently "broke though" with Milford Regional Medical Center. People in need of the service wait for up to three hours for a ride home through the hospital's current ambulance agreements with private companies, Daige said.  

As world leaders grapple with how to efficiently and safely deliver COVID-19 vaccines to 8 billion people, the task of building vaccine-administration pods will fall to thousands of local hospitals, clinics, and community centers. There will be no "one size fits all" solution to this challenge; core design elements, based on basic principles of continuous improvement (or lean management), offer a roadmap. As world leaders grapple with how to efficiently and safely deliver COVID-19 vaccines to 8 billion people, the task of building vaccine-administration pods will fall to thousands of local hospitals, clinics, and community centers. There will be no "one size fits all" solution to this challenge; core design elements, based on basic principles of continuous improvement (or lean management), offer a roadmap. Define the Challenge All lean, or continuous improvement, work begins with some version of defining the problem to be solved.