The Triumvirate Theatre in Nikiski is reportedly a "total loss" following a Saturday morning fire at the community playhouse. Alaska State Troopers were notified of the fire at approximately 3:15 a.m. by a passerby, who reported that a commercial building near Mile 16 of the Kenai Spur Highway was "fully engulfed" in flames, according to a Saturday trooper dispatch. Fire personnel from Nikiski, Kenai and Soldotna responded. According to the trooper dispatch, initial estimates place losses near $500,000. There were no injuries. The state Fire Marshal's Office is investigating the origin of the fire, the dispatch said. Joe Rizzo, executive director of the theater, told the Clarion on Saturday that he was alerted to the fire at about 3:30 a.m. By the time he arrived at the theater, fire personnel had responded to the scene. He said the south side of the building had already collapsed on top of itself. "It's a total loss," he said. Rizzo called the fire "devastating," and said he's not sure what the next steps for the theater will be.  

A Stockton man was arrested in Richmond late Saturday on suspicion of attempted murder in the drive-by shooting incident that injured a firefighter and a paramedic in Antioch, and now authorities are searching for his girlfriend and 4-year-old son. The arrest of Darryon Williams, 26, followed a pursuit that traversed two counties and ended moments after Williams' vehicle collided with a parked vehicle in Richmond. Williams also is accused in a homicide in Discovery Bay, police said. Saturday's incident began shortly before 9 p.m., when Contra Costa firefighters and an ambulance from American Medical Response responded to a call for someone requiring medical attention in a parking lot in the 1900 block of Auto Center Drive. Police said that while the first responders were caring for the patient, a silver SUV drove by and someone inside fired shots at them. The vehicle drove by a second time and someone inside fired a second series of shots. A 31-year-old firefighter was shot in the foot and a 58-year-old paramedic was shot in the leg.  

VIDEO: A massive fire broke out in a hotel in Killeen, Texas, after the building's sprinkler systems failed to work due to frozen pipes. On Friday night, the Killeen Fire Department arrived at the Hilton Garden Inn hotel in Killeen to find "fire coming from the roof above the fourth floor of the four-story hotel," according to a statement from the fire department. Seven agencies responded to the fire and were able to control it just after midnight. "Firefighting efforts were hindered due to automatic sprinkler system being out of service because of frozen pipes," the fire department said. The hotel was reportedly at full capacity at the time of the fire, and all 102 of its rooms were in use. The fire department transported some of the displaced guests to the Skyline Baptist Church after the incident, and the American Red Cross has been contacted to assist them, according to the statement.  

When Jersey City firefighters were jarred awake in the wee hours of a cool spring night to put out a blaze in a nearby building, they pretty much knew what to expect. The call, which came in around 3:30 a.m. on May 4, 1949, was for a small fire that started on the first floor of a three-story tenement on Montgomery St. Considering the time, location and description, the smoke eaters figured it had to be the handiwork of an arsonist who'd been plaguing the area for over a year and always stuck to the same M.O. Lurking in the dead of night, the phantom firebug would find a baby carriage stored under a stairwell in a building hallway, stuff it with newspapers soaked with a flammable liquid, light a match — and make a quick getaway before fire trucks came on the scene. Luckily, he'd so far been more nuisance than menace. He struck at least four times in a working-class neighborhood about a mile west of downtown Jersey City, directly across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. But firefighters had responded quickly, and property damage was minimal.  

The life of a firefighter means being ready for anything. For some, the burden of tragic calls wears on them, which is why the Sandy Fire Department has made focusing on mental health a priority. For Firefighter EMT Tyson Astin, trying to keep his identities separate is of the utmost importance. "I don't wear my uniform home," he said. "When I walk through that door, I'm dad." But for many firefighters, keeping that division is nearly impossible — after all, most of us have never seen the kinds of things they have. "The top calls that are tough to deal with always deal with kids," Astin said. "We had a car accident a couple of years ago, and there was a family that was hit by an impaired driver. The kids in the car, one of them ended up passing away and it was a similar age to my kid."  

Trading professional hockey for a career as a Rome, New York firefighter is working well for Tim Sestito. Particularly for athletes, life can appear to move quicker than for people in other professions. For Sestito, grinding out a career in hockey for 13 seasons went in what seemed in a flash. Training camps, regular seasons, playoffs (including the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals with the New Jersey Devils), off-season workouts, the battle for a roster spot was a continuous competitive cycle. Since skating his last season in the Russian-based Kontinental Hockey League with Dinamo Riga in Latvia (2016-17), Sestito has dedicated himself to a new set of teammates, in a new arena. Now in his fourth year as a member of the Rome Fire Department, Sestito is all in on serving the citizens of the city in which he grew up.