Three Alaska wildland firefighting crews traveled to the Lower 48 states on Friday to assist with wildfire suppression efforts in the western United States. The three crews – the BLM Alaska Fire Service Midnight Sun Hotshots, Chena Hotshots, and the Alaska Division of Forestry White Mountain Type 2 Initial Attack Crew – boarded an airliner at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks Friday morning. The aircraft came up to Alaska from the National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho Thursday to transport the crews to Boise, where they will be quickly assigned to one of a multitude of wildfires burning in the western U.S. "It's always sad leaving Alaska but it will be good to get down there," Iris Sager, crew superintendent for the Chena hotshot crew, said.  

The community of Salcha is around 30 miles outside of Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway. The roughly 1,000 residents like to keep to themselves and do things differently. According to Fire Chief Tim Biggane, the Salcha Fire and Rescue is no different. "It is a department that is unlike any other fire department. We don't run our department off of a tax base, we run our fire department off of a membership base." Residents of Salcha who want fire service pay a yearly fee and then if there is a fire, the fire department responds for free. This is different than all the other fire service areas in the Fairbanks North Star Borough that factor the cost of fire service into property taxes. Biggane said that the subscription doesn't mean they deny service to anyone. He clarified that they still will come and put the fire out; they just charge an hourly fee for the equipment and firefighters.  

A shared contract to hire firefighters jointly is in the works among six area municipalities that are struggling to find and retain firefighters. If approved, the estimated $405,847 annual contract would staff two full-time, EMS-trained firefighters to serve the neighboring towns and villages of Walworth, Sharon and Darien around the clock. The proposed contract begins on Jan. 1, 2021 and continues for three years. Mark Ruosch, president of the village of Sharon, said all of the municipalities have had trouble finding or retaining new firefighters, and often do not have flexibility in their budgets to pay for full-time additions. The Village of Sharon has no full-time fire department staff and operates only with volunteers who are paid either hourly or per call. Recently the village has had difficulty finding volunteers to fill vacant spots.  

VIDEO: The Macomb County Prosecutor's Office announced Friday that a Fraser woman has been charged with setting a car on fire after video shows her apparently filling the SUV with gasoline and then lighting it, only to have it explode in her face. Sydney Parham, 26, was arrested on arson charges after police said she set the car on fire on Wednesday. The fire department and deputies were called to the San Remo Apartments on Union Lake Road for a car fire on Wednesday around 8 a.m. Video shot from across the parking lot shows a woman, identified by deputies as Parham, filling the back seat with what looks like gasoline, reaching in to ignite it with what looks like a stick lighter, and then the fire explodes in her face, sending her backward onto the pavement next to the SUV. The video was uploaded to YouTube by user ppv_tahoe. The Macomb County Sheriff's office confirmed the video is the same incident that Parham was charged in.  

Ann Jerome got to see her son for a brief moment before he was flown to Syracuse with injuries critical enough to make his survival expectancy unclear. She was able to touch his hand, then hear him say he was sorry. It was around 4 p.m. on Tuesday when the Parishville Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched to a scene where a person was having difficulty breathing. Nicholas D. Jerome, a 30-year-old assistant chief and EMT who has been with the Parishville department for 12 years, was driving his truck to the fire station before heading out on the call. On his way, his emergency lights activated, Mr. Jerome was approaching an intersection on Catherine Street when a vehicle began crossing. He swerved to avoid the vehicle and lost control, exiting the right side of the road and striking a telephone pole before crashing into a tree on the driver's side. Witnesses later said there was a person mowing a lawn that he also avoided. Mr. Jerome would later say he never lost consciousness.  

PHOTOS: As the Indianapolis Fire Department was finishing a pre-planned training exercise Saturday on Geist Reservoir, conservationists with the Department of Natural Resources asked them to help search for a missing prosthetic leg. That leg belonged to Amy Gillum. Her family was out on their boat and when she went to take off her prosthetic leg to get in the water, it slipped and fell in. Three divers with IFD spent 20 minutes each in zero visibility attempting to locate the leg. "I was sitting there thinking, ‘What am I going to do? How am I going to get off the boat?' This is my life, and I never had that feeling of, ‘I am not walking unless I get this,'" Gillum said. After almost an hour of searching, the last diver was doing his final pass when he found it. It was located 20 feet down and 100 yards from shore.  

Late-July 1910 saw the Harbor beset by fires, not particularly unusual during the summer in small timber towns. It was the massive holocaust in Hoquiam on July 22, 1910 that killed two and injured many more that held the headlines when the substantial, picturesque four-story Hotel Hoquiam was reduced to rubble in an early morning blaze. Cosmopolis – Fire was discovered about four o'clock this morning in a one-story frame building on Main street, owned by the Grays Harbor Commercial Co., and occupied as a bowling alley and cigar store. The fire department was quickly on the scene after the alarm was given, and succeeded in confining the flames to the building in which they originated. The building and contents are almost a total loss, and the amount of insurance, if any, is unknown. Hoquiam – Damages to the extent of $5,000 was done to the city hall here today when fire broke in the attic of the building, threatening its destruction.