The City of Unalaska has hired a fire chief. The position has been vacant since Ramona Thompson was fired from the position last October after about a year and a half leading the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services. The new hiree, Patrick Shipp, will be moving north shortly from Webster, Texas. While there, he served as Fire Chief for almost twelve years. He also served in the U.S. Coast Guard. According to a Houston NBC-affiliate news outlet, last year, Shipp was briefly suspended from his position. When he applied for the job in 2008, Shipp neglected to include his criminal record — which includes a DWI in the 1980s and felony theft in the 1990s, for which he later received a deferred adjudication. City Manager Erin Reinders said the city conducted extensive background and reference checks on Mr. Shipp.  

Authorities in Sitka are braced for the inevitable arrival of the COVID-19 virus. Members of the Local Emergency Planning Committee held a public meeting on Friday afternoon (3-6-20) to share information about the disease. Dr. Elliot Bruhl, chief medical officer for the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, told the group that Sitka wouldn't escape the infection. "I believe it's just a matter of time until we're going to be dealing with this," Bruhl said. "In the meantime, what we're doing is spending our efforts very vigorously to make sure that all of our processes are in place so that our staff are safe, and that we can take good quality care of patients." COVID-19 is one of over 70 identified "coronaviruses." It emerged last year in Wuhan, an enormous city in mainland China, and in many ways resembles ordinary influenza. But for certain populations — people with autoimmune diseases, diabetes, or other chronic conditions (even pregnancy) — the new virus has proven to be more dangerous than influenza. And there's no "cure" other than prevention.  

PHOTOS:Four Arkansas firefighters were hospitalized after an accident on Interstate 55 near Marion on Monday. The Marion Fire Department was clearing the scene of an unrelated accident at the 24-mile marker of Interstate 55 when the department was "involved in an accident with a semi truck." According to a Facebook post, four fire department personnel were transported to the hospital with minor injuries. As of 3 a.m. on Tuesday, three of the individuals had been released from the hospital and one remained for further testing.  

The Chicago Fire Department is swapping out coloring books for virtual reality headsets as its preferred educational tool to instill fire safety basics in the minds of elementary and middle schoolers. Fire Commissioner Richard Ford unveiled the technology Tuesday during a demonstration at St. Sabina Academy with a group of 5th and 6th graders who strapped on the headsets to find themselves getting out of bed to the sound of a beeping smoke detector. Students, faced with several options to escape, used a handheld device pick what to do next. "It feels real," said 11-year-old Daila Wardell. "I ran downstairs," she said, safely avoiding a kitchen that was ablaze. "It gives you the experience of knowing how to get out of a fire but in a way that doesn't traumatize the kids," said Fire Department spokesman Larry Langford, whose voice narrates the options in the virtual setting. "It is the first of its kind," Ford said proudly during a news conference at the Auburn Gresham neighborhood school.  

PHOTOS: San Bernardino County Fire Department search teams staged a daring and complex rescue of a man trapped in a remote mine over the weekend, authorities say. Early Sunday morning, County Fire officials received a call from an unidentified explorer in a rural, unincorporated area of Twentynine Palms who had recently left a mine and reported that a partner was still inside and unable to get out. According to a statement form the San Bernardino County Fire Department, multiple Urban Search and Rescue teams were deployed to handle the operation. Rescuers had to drive off-road for 45 minutes to reach the mine and begin the operation. Three heavy rescue vehicles, three engines and a total of 35 staff were deployed to the scene near Gold Crown Road. To reach the trapped man, rescuers braved significant hazards within the mine, including unsafe terrain, and high temperatures and humidity, officials said in the statement that described the 15-hour effort.  

A bill is being discussed in a Kansas Senate committee Tuesday that would give fire investigators law enforcement powers in the state. This means, if an investigator encounters a crime in progress, they would have the legal right to pull-over, detain, and even arrest someone. The Kansas Fire Marshal, Doug Jorgensen, made clear during his testimony in favor of the bill that investigators would not be conducting traffic stops. Jorgensen referenced an incident where a drunk driver was driving on the wrong side of the road, a fire investigator pulled the driver over and detained them until police arrived. "Prosecutors in the state were a little leery of bringing cases forward in court because it wasn't really clear what our law enforcement powers were," said Jorgensen.  

A few Upstate ambulances are now carrying a cooler that can save lives. The No. 1 cause of preventable deaths that ambulances deal with is loss of blood, said Aaron Dix, Prisma Health's executive director of emergency medical services. If someone has a severe gunshot wound or hemorrhaging or has been in a severe accident, they could lose blood faster than an ambulance can get them to a hospital, Dix said. "The only way to keep you alive until the trauma surgeons get to you is to give you blood," he said. There will be some patients who are too far gone for any transfusion to save them but for about 200 people a year in the Upstate, the ability to do mobile blood transfusions could be the difference between life and death, he said. It has not been possible, until now, for ambulances in the state to carry something that keeps the blood at the right temperature, and warms it up fast enough to help. Ambulances are packed already, there's no room for even a small fridge.