One man was found dead at the scene of a fire Sunday morning in Salcha, according to a media release from Salcha Fire & Rescue. The deceased has been identified as Joseph Kuntz, age 58. Rescue crews were dispatched just after 10 a.m. for an unknown person down. Upon arrival, responders found Kuntz dead in a 3-bay, wood frame garage/shop that had burned to the ground. Details regarding the fire and the death are still under investigation by Salcha Fire Rescue and the State Fire Marshal's office in Fairbanks.  

The cost of fighting this summer's Alaska wildfires has topped $300 million, and state and local officials say the final tally may not be known for years. The new figure also does not include the cost to Alaskans who saw their land torched and homes burned. Through Nov. 21, the Alaska Division of Forestry recorded $224.9 million in firefighting expenses for 2019. The U.S. Department of the Interior has reported $72 million. The U.S. Forest Service — an agency of the Department of Agriculture — reported $7 million in expenses through Nov. 18. Melissa Brown, deputy press secretary for the office of the Secretary of the Interior, said some wildfire costs may show up in later fiscal years, so the $72 million figure is not final.  

Squeezed into the back-bending cargo area on a fixed-wing plane, Haines resident Russell Kennedy was among seven men in various stages of repose, speeding towards a column of smoke erupting from the foothills of the Brooks Range in Northwest Alaska. While most people run away from fires, it's Kennedy's job to parachute into them. He's a smokejumper in Alaska, an elite group of firefighters that act as first responder to wildfires. As the name suggests, smokejumpers hurl themselves from airplanes into remote areas set ablaze, where they set up camp and suppress or extinguish wildfires for as many as 14 consecutive days.  

Faced with an unprecedented string of wildfires across California, overtime costs for firefighters have surged by 65% in the last decade, pushing annual wages to nearly $5 billion, according to a Times analysis of state payroll records. The overtime spending is further evidence of a statewide toll: Wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes, killed scores of residents and disrupted power supplies across large swaths of the state — and, increasingly, they are chewing through government budgets. With overtime, firefighters are among the best-paid workers in California government, in some cases earning sums that rival their commanders. In the city and county fire departments in Los Angeles, for example, the number of firefighters earning more than $100,000 in overtime alone has surged from 41 in 2011 to 1,085 last year.  

Summit Fire & EMS firefighter Ken Jones, 46, died after falling about 60 feet from the roof of a Copper Mountain condo building early Saturday, when crews were working to battle a fire at that location, according to Summit Fire & EMS officials. The fire at Bridge End — 860 Copper Road, near the base of Copper Mountain Resort — was first reported by a call to 911 at 1:51 a.m. Saturday. Jones and a crew from the Copper fire station were the first on scene minutes later, according to Summit Fire spokesman Steve Lipsher. Jones headed to the roof of the five-story building to find a way to access the fire. He fell to his death shortly before 2 a.m., according to Lipsher. After the fall, emergency workers called to ask for help from another fire station outside of the Summit Fire department.  

Five minutes ago, Kassie Scott was driving the ambulance down Main Street with lights on and siren blaring, but now she and paramedic Steve Smith are parked in front of the response address, sitting in silence, waiting for the police to arrive. The caller said the person was violent. Scott and Smith are trained and equipped to save lives, not defend their own. Protocol requires law enforcement to go in first, but they've beaten them there. They're both anxious to go in—they chose this career to help people—but you never know what's on the other side of the door: someone high on drugs or having a psychotic breakdown or armed or maybe all three at the same time. A police cruiser pulls in, and Scott and Smith follow the officer into the home. A terrified young woman there thinks a serial killer has been stalking her and now knows her location.  

The firefighter and EMT union president in Washington D.C. is disputing recent claims by the East Chicago city administration as it justified controversial new shifts for city firefighters. Mayor Anthony Copeland and Fire Chief Anthony Serna recently told The Times the firefighters shifts were being changed to save taxpayer dollars, a move they claimed was successful in Washington, D.C. But Dabney Scott Hudson, president of the District of Columbia FireFighters Association, told The Times on Saturday those claims were incorrect. "Our case went to arbitration, and we prevailed in the arbitration case, keeping our 24-hour shift. In the arbitration, the city testified that the change would in fact increase costs to the city. Additionally, the health and safety, as well as cognitive function of the workers significantly, decrease working rotating shifts such as the ones they are proposing," Hudson said in a statement.  

One person was hit and injured by a vehicle in Arroyo Grande on Friday morning — and the incident happened right in front of a Five Cities Fire Authority station. Five Cities Fire Authority Chief Steve Lieberman told The Tribune a woman was crossing the street where there was no marked crosswalk in Arroyo Grande outside of the Village when she appears to have been hit by a car. She has been transported to the trauma center at Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, he said. Soon after the incident, the Fire Department — which serves Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach and Oceano — tweeted that thanks to the new Pulse Point app, which notifies the public of medical and emergency incidents in their vicinity, FCFA crews could respond immediately and begin life-saving measures before dispatch notified them of the crash.