Capital City Fire and Rescue responded to a remote road near Hoonah on Sunday, for an air rescue of a young man who had been in a motorcycle accident. News of the North reached out to assistant fire chief Travis Mead, who coordinated CCFR's response. "An Alaska State Trooper called me to inform me that there had been an Inreach activation for a person that had a possible broken leg over near Hoonah on one of the roads, one of the dirt roads, and he asked if CCFR was able to provide some medical personnel to fly over in a helicopter and assist with you know, treating and stabilizing and then bringing him over here to care," said Mead. "And I said, Yeah, absolutely. That's, you know, something that we do within CBJ, normally within the CBJ but we can go outside of it. If need be if requested, and we call that an Air Rescue and it's pretty much it's a scene we access with a helicopter usually and so we did that we were able to provide a paramedic and an EMT and they got their gear together and then met over at Temsco"  

Firefighters were dousing hot spots early Wednesday morning after a four-alarm fire destroyed an auto sales and repair building in Pennsauken, New Jersey. The cleanup effort could delay the morning commute for drivers heading from South Jersey into Philadelphia due to road closures on Route 130/South Crescent Boulevard. Southbound lanes of Route 130 remain closed near the scene. Northbound lanes of Route 130 have reopened to traffic. The initial call came in around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday for a raging fire at the US Auto Auction building located on the 6600 block of South Crescent Boulevard. according to Pennsauken Fire Chief Joseph Palumbo. Chopper 6 was overhead as firefighters worked to contain the inferno. A huge ball of fire shot into the air, producing small explosions inside the building. Officials say at least three businesses worked out of the now-ravaged warehouse.  

Every year, millions of 911 calls involve a person experiencing an emergency related to a mental health or substance use disorder—situations often referred to as behavioral health crises. How these calls are handled can determine whether the incident ends safely, the person in crisis is arrested, or the person is connected to appropriate care. The call-takers and dispatchers answering these emergency calls make critical assessments of the health and safety of those involved in each call, decide whether help is needed, and, if it is, determine whether it should be led by law enforcement officers, emergency medical services, or more specialized field responses (if available). The important role 911 plays in behavioral health emergencies has drawn increased national attention in recent years, with new ideas emerging on how call centers and emergency responses can be more effective.  

VIDEO: It's the most dangerous part of being a firefighter: entering a burning structure blind to look for victims. What if a robot could go in first? As these first responders search for people who might be inside the flames, dangers like toxic gases pose life-threatening hazards. Additionally, burning buildings may be unstable and could collapse on those inside at any moment. After hearing about a local firefighter's death, 17-year-old Siddharth Thakur, a University of Texas engineering student, invented what he hopes to be a solution. It's called the Firebot: a fire-resistant, radio-enhanced intelligence-gathering robot. He brought his initial idea of a firefighting robot to his advisor Roland Fields, a supervisor at the the Fabrication and Innovation lab at Houston Community College. Fields says he thought it was a novel idea.  

For years, fire departments have been using a foam laced with toxic chemicals to fight large, fuel-based fires – a new program in Colorado allows fire departments to swap out their original foam with a safer alternative. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has linked cancer and other medical conditions to the chemicals, known as PFAS, in the firefighting foam and are considered "forever chemicals" that are extremely hard to remove from the environment and the human body once they are introduced. PFAS are also known to enter drinking water supply after seeping through the ground, jeopardizing drinking water for entire towns. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) recently began the firefighting foam buyback program called the "Takeback" program – where Colorado fire departments can take unused firefighting foam containing PFAS out of service and safely store it until there is a safe disposal method.  

31-year-old Clay Geiger of Lakeland understands the risks of a firefighter but he never imagined a rare cancer would put his life on the brink and a state law would help him pay for the medical treatments to fight it. "I didn't have to worry about bills and mortgage and everything like that," he said,"I was able to just focus on treatment and getting through it." The combination of chemotherapy and radiation during the first 6- weeks of Geiger's cancer treatment left him 25 pounds lighter than when he started the journey 6-months ago. "It's like you're going through survival mode where you're just trying to continue to the next day, " he told News 6, "It was very tough." Geiger was diagnosed with NK-T cell lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.