Capital City Fire Rescue responded to the 2000 block of Glacier Bear Avenue for reports of a home filled with smoke Tuesday evening. Assistant Fire Chief Ed Quinto said the fire call came in at 5:48 pm. Crews said all of the occupants got out safely. A neighbor was able to put out most of the fire with an extinguisher as crews responded to the scene. Quinto said crews were able to put out the remainder of the flames and mop up without further difficulty. An estimated $5,000 in property damage was reported. The cause of the fire will be determined by the Capital City Fire Marshal's Office.  

What started a massive salvage yard fire in the Bronx remains unknown, but fire investigators consider its cause suspicious. The blaze and smoke seen for miles prompted a 5-alarm response from the FDNY on Monday afternoon. The heat was so intense that vehicles parked on nearby streets were burned, a fire chief said. In the heart of the fire, car parts and wooden pallets burned. Nearly 200 members of the city's fire department responded to the fire on Drake Street in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. One firefighter did suffer a minor injury, according to the fire chief. Investigators say they don't believe anyone was inside the salvage yard at the time and the fact that the flames sparked in the middle of a holiday made the fire suspicious. Jasmine Ramos says she saw a video of the fire and recognized her parents' auto repair shop that sits next door to the junkyard.  

New Orleans is getting $15.9 million from the federal government to hire 62 firefighters, city officials announced on Tuesday. The grant will pay the full cost of the new hires' salary and benefits for three years, giving the city a way to expand the New Orleans Fire Department, which firefighters have said has been understaffed for years. "Having the grant award to pay for a three-year period allows us the cushion to pay for it," Mayor LaToya Cantrell said of the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Grant at a press conference on Tuesday. "We knew we needed to grow our department and this was the best way to do it." Staffing has long been a concern at the NOFD. Under former Mayor Mitch Landrieu, budget cuts required the department to scale back the number of firefighters assigned to each truck, something the firefighters' union objected to because it meant more vehicles had to arrive at a scene before there were enough personnel to safely enter buildings.  

Thirty-five years ago, on Labor Day in 1985, two Passaic boys unwittingly set a fire that would destroy an estimated 20% of the industrial base in a city already under considerable duress. In all, about 2.2 million square feet of industrial space burned down. The fire, known forever after as the Labor Day Fire, produced heat so intense it caused nearby buildings to combust before flames reached them. It left 2,000 jobless and hundreds homeless as the conflagration destroyed 17 multi-family homes and scores of businesses. A firefighter from Secaucus died of a heart attack after responding to a mutual aid call. "This was a huge deal," City Historian Mark Auerbach said. "Passaic's strength was based on its industry." The fire's scar remains. Seventeen acres of the 22 consumed are still either vacant or largely abandoned, costing the city millions in tax revenues.  

Ralph Gismondi knew he wasn't going to make it. The retired FDNY captain, who spent weeks on the smoldering wreckage of Ground Zero, only to find a second career as a JetBlue flight attendant, told his wife Ann in late March that he could no longer fight off the deadly coronavirus that had begun to ravage his 68-year-old body. Gismondi couldn't breathe without an oxygen mask and seemed to be in constant pain. And while Ann tried to encourage her husband of nearly 50 years to keep fighting, the end was near. Gismondi was placed on a ventilator March 20 and died April 5. "I didn't think he was going to die but he did. Ralph knew," Ann Gismondi said. "Here he was: a 9/11 survivor and this is what took him out." As the 19th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks approaches, Ralph Gismondi joins a growing list of 9/11 first responders who have faced a dual set of painful challenges — each originating from that clear Tuesday morning in lower Manhattan 19 years ago.  

PHOTOS: The Visalia Fire Department will have a step up in training thanks in partnership with California Water Service. Cal Water awarded VFD a grant worth $102,000, which allowed for the purchase of a 10-foot mobile pump pod for the fire agency. According to Cal Water administration analyst Chrissy Balderama, the new water-saving device is a self-contained unit that recirculates water that is used during firefighter training and pump testing. Water officials say it will save the fire department 4.5 million gallons of water per year. Firefighters demonstrated the new water-saving device, called the Direct Recirculation Apparatus Firefighter Training & Sustainability (D.R.A.F.T.S.) Unit, on Tuesday at Station 55 in northwest Visalia. "This unit is really an integral part of conservation," Cal Water district manager Steve Johnson said. "They can fill this thing up to 1,700 gallons a minute, put it into this D.R.A.F.T.S. unit with minimal water waste."