Recreational boaters on the Little Susitna River in the Houston area required a little help from responders to safely get back to shore during a pair of incidents within a seven-day span. In both situations, the people were well prepared and practicing best practices for safe recreational boating, Houston Fire Department officials said. The Houston Fire Department was dispatched with Emergency Medical Services, the Mat-Su Borough Water Rescue Team, and Alaska State Troopers about midnight on June 6 for a reported boating accident involving multiple victims on the Little Susitna River upstream of its Parks Highway bridge. On arrival, crews were able to determine that five adults from multiple boats had experienced an accident on a river bend, which resulted in all five people ending up in the river.  

The Newton Firefighters Association said on Monday it is taking legal action against the city for taking down a remembrance flag last week that had been hanging inside Station 4 for the last 2½ years. Marc Rizza, Local 863 president, said in a statement that hanging the Thin Red Line flag "is a protected activity under the collective bargaining laws of the Commonwealth." In response to what Rizza called the city's "unilateral" action, "Local 863 has filed a charge against the city with the Commonwealth's Department of Labor Relations." Mayor Ruthanne Fuller's office was unable to comment Monday on the union's decision. "We fly the remembrance flag in honor of the valiant men and woman who sacrificed so much to protect their communities. Keeping alive the memory of those who gave their all is a deep part of who we are," said Rizza.  

New numbers released by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offer a comprehensive picture of who in the United States has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and how they fared. The latest figures confirm that older people, minorities and those with preexisting health conditions are at the highest risk of death. There was a total of 1,761,503 cases of COVID-19 and 103,700 related deaths in the country between January 22 (when the first case was confirmed) and May 30, according to the surveillance report, published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The data come from local, state and federal sources and is consistent with those reported through the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center. Overall, 184,673 (14%) patients were hospitalized, 29,837 (2%) were admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU), and 71,116 (5%) died.  

Had the parlor game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon instead been designed with Lisa Camp in mind, everyone in Friendswood and La Porte would have been directly or indirectly touched by the longtime emergency medical services leader. The Friendswood native is the EMS chief for the volunteer fire departments in both Friendswood and La Porte. Because of Camp's introduction of innovative treatments for patient care, the 100 Club recently honored her with its Lifetime Achievement Award. The 32,000-member organization, which serves 32 counties in the region, provides financial support for the dependents of law enforcement officers and firefighters killed or seriously injured in the line of duty. The honor has Camp reflecting on a career filled with challenges and rewards. She helped bring programs in Friendswood such as use of induced hypothermia in heart-attack cases.  

Within a few months, teams of mental health workers and EMTs will be dispatched in some Alameda County cities to help people having a mental crisis or substance abuse problems. The pilot program, called the "Community Assessment Treatment and Transport Team," or CATT, will roll out in Oakland, San Leandro, Hayward and Alameda sometime this summer. Each team will have a licensed behavioral health clinician and an emergency medical technician. The mental health workers will be from the county, and emergency medical technicians will be from the ambulance company Falck Northern California. They will travel in a modified Chevrolet Tahoe. They will be dispatched through 911 calls and if necessary will work with local police officers and firefighters at the scene to assess people and get them treatment.  

The following highlights some of the notable fires or building collapses in the lower Valley in the past 10 years... Sept. 11, 2010: Fire destroys the Housatonic Wire complex in Seymour. The building was slated to be the site of a new development. Jan. 6, 2014: A four-story Howe Avenue building opposite the Shelton end of the Derby-Shelton Bridge burns and collapses, leaving five injured and several homeless. June 26, 2014: Four firefighters are injured as an overnight fire damages the Latex International Foam factory on River Road in Shelton. This blaze comes 11 years after the company's original site in Ansonia burned down (pictured). The company, now known as Talalay Global, was formed by executives from the Sponge Rubber Company, whose downtown Shelton plant was destroyed in 1975, one of several notable acts of arson in the city in the past 50 years.