Capital City Fire Rescue has released more details about a structure fire Sunday morning that left a Glacier Avenue home extensively damaged. Fire crews said the fire was caused either due to overloaded electrical circuits or due to the failure of an appliance. Crews were on the scene for about three hours early Sunday putting out all the flames and embers inside the home. No one was injured in the blaze in the 1600 block of Glacier Avenue. Firefighters praised a smoke alarm for waking up the family and helping them to survive the fire. The fire originated on the first floor beneath the main stairway which happens to be the primary exit. The estimate of property damage was $100,000.  

Eight firefighters were swept into Lake Michigan during a dramatic rescue attempt late Sunday, Nov. 15, on the south pier at Pere Marquette Park. Nine firefighters were injured. One suffered serious injuries and was hospitalized. The search resumed Monday morning for the body of Lance Jenkins, 29, of Fruitport Township. He was swept off the pier with two others who got back to the pier. Waves reached 12 feet, with wind gusts over 50 mph. The first rescuers on scene saw the man clinging to rocks on the north side of the pier at the Muskegon channel. Two firefighters approached from the beach while four others got into a rescue boat. Waves pummeled the pier as firefighters on shore made their way out. They made several tries to reach the victim before one of them was swept off the pier into the water. The firefighter was injured but managed to get back to the pier.  

A veteran firefighter in Arlington County, Virginia, is breaking barriers as she rises through the ranks. Tiffanye Wesley is the first African American woman named deputy fire chief in all of Northern Virginia. "You can do anything that you put your mind to. I mean, look at what we're looking at in America today having a African-American female as vice president-elect," Wesley said. Wesley has been with the Arlington County Fire Department for 26 years, and has worked in just about every capacity there is, including on the bomb squad. Two years ago, she became the first African American woman battalion chief in Northern Virginia. "I love to be able to inspire, especially woman, to just know that you can come into a male-dominated profession. It's a very difficult profession, but you can do it," Wesley said. Chief David Povlitz says she was a top choice.  

You don't know what you don't know. Hornell Fire Chief Frank Brzozowski didn't know what to expect a year ago today, when the department was toned out for a fire on Preston Avenue in the city. Each call is treated as a structure fire until proven otherwise, though most don't keep firefighters busy for long — a small oven fire that tripped a smoke detector, perhaps, or maybe leaves burning in a backyard. The latter certainly seemed like a possibility on that sunny fall afternoon, a good day to be outside getting a few final chores done before winter. It was a Sunday, and the Buffalo Bills were in the midst of building a big lead over the Dolphins. Chief Brzozowski was home when the call came in. "My first intuition was it's just another call, and we can usually handle them pretty easily," Brzozowski recalled. "When I came up over the overhead behind the fire station I could see the column of smoke in the air, so I knew we had something that was more significant than just a small fire."  

A group of local firefighters pivoted when the pandemic hit to help in the fight against COVID-19. Their Lake County business is creating custom testing and vaccination trailers for counties across the country. Adapt and overcome: that is a motto firefighters say they live by. When COVID spiked in the U.S. the first time, a northwest suburban small business stopped making fire safety simulators and started building out mobile units for testing and eventually administering vaccines. A UV light system self-sanitizes the units. "We're seeing a collaboration of agencies from the public health agency, to the public safety agency, to emergency management, all working together, because no one had one solution for the problem. So, they're able to work together and pool their resources to have an asset like the health incident trailer that allows them to then be able to do COVID testing and vaccination, use it as a point of distribution for PPE and other equipment, but also use it as an incident command down the road with health safety protocols," said Christopher Gantz, JHB Group CEO.