Alaska may have reached the limit of hospital space available for care of people infected with COVID-19, a health care company official said. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation recently had to keep a patient at its Bethel facility for an extra day because there were no available beds in Anchorage, KYUK-AM reported Wednesday. The corporation's hospital in Bethel does not have an intensive care unit, which medical staff deemed necessary for the patient's treatment, said Dr. Ellen Hodges, the corporation's chief of staff. "This was an ICU-level patient, and all the ICU beds in Anchorage were full," Hodges said Wednesday. "So we've already reached, I think, the limits of our capacity of the healthcare of the state. So it makes some of these mitigation strategies more important." Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities are experiencing a national trend, noted in statistics released by the federal Centers for Disease Control.  

New Yorkers can now download a free app to their smartphones that will alert them if they come near people who test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday the launch of the state's new COVID Alert NY app. New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware will offer their own versions of the app as well. The app uses the phone's existing Bluetooth technology to alert the user when they come within close contact of an infected person, defined as 6 feet. The app talks to other people's apps. When someone reports to the Department of Health that they are infected, contact tracers will ask if they have the app and are willing to share their contact list, which is automatically generated by being within 6 feet of someone for more than 10 minutes and who also activated the app.  

Officers with the Riverside Police Department had a woman in a pink dress stand up outside their patrol car for witnesses to identify after she allegedly stole a fire truck and took it on a joy ride Thursday night. The 31-year-old woman is suspected of stealing a Riverside Fire Department truck and taking it on a joyride while first responders were handling a life-threatening medical emergency. "Two police officers responded first, they began CPR," Riverside police Sgt. Juan Munoz said. "They saved the man's life." Munoz said that while firefighters were getting that man, who had stopped breathing, into an ambulance, the woman hopped inside their engine at Hole Avenue and drove it three miles away — to the eastbound Adams Street off-ramp on the 91 Freeway — colliding with at least two cars along the way. And when the fire engine finally came to a stop at the off-ramp, officers said the woman attempted to get into at least two other cars.  

The City of Glendale has a new peer support program they hope will help end suicide growing rates among firefighters. The program is one of the first of its kind in the state, addressing nationwide statistics that firefighters are more likely to die by suicide than on the job. One hundred twenty times a day, that's the amount firefighters here in Glendale are called to duty. This makes them one of the busiest fire departments in the US. "We see everything from gunshot wounds stabbings, child codes drowning, heart attacks," said Captain Ashley Losch with Glendale Fire. And often, In these cases, they arrive first on the scene. In particular, one call has stuck with Captain Ashley Losch, the night she responded to a double murder-suicide. "Truth be told, it's been ten years since that call, and I didn't know I was struggling with this all this time," said Losch. "A father that had killed his two children, they were lying in their beds, and he shot himself, and he videotaped himself doing that, the whole act."'  

Springfield firefighters have released a series of videos in honor of Fire Prevention Month. According to the City of Springfield, the videos will be released throughout October on the Springfield Fire Department's social media pages. Here is a list of all seven of the educational videos: Cooking Safety (by Firefighter Justine, for fourth and fifth graders); Firefighters Are Our Friends (by Firefighter Tanner, for PreK-K); Stay Away From Dangerous Things (by Firefighter Geoff, for PreK-K); Recognizing Home Hazards (by Firefighter Tanner, for first-graders); Escape Drills in the Home (by Firefighter Mark, for second-graders); How and When to Call 911 (by Firefighter Mark, for third-graders); and The Fire Triangle (by Firefighter Geoff, for fifth-graders). "Community Risk Reduction is about prioritizing our risks as a community and working together to invest the time and resources necessary to reduce them," said Fire Chief David Pennington.  

A very cool historical look at the volunteer fire service in Maryland from WMAR-TV in Baltimore. The half-hour documentary is from October 10, 1969 and has film from fire companies in a number of counties throughout the state. There is also a section on University of Maryland's Fire Service Extension, the forerunner to Maryland Fire and Rescue Institute. Many thanks to Rusty Leftwich for sending this to STATter911.