A 59-year-old man was found dead in a fire in Chinatown Thursday, according to the Chicago police and fire departments. Firefighters responded about 1:40 p.m. to a six-unit building in the 2600 block of S. Wells St. on the South Side, according to department spokesman Larry Merritt. Heavy fire was coming from the front window, he said. Inside, firefighters found a man near the front of the building, Merritt said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Merritt said no one else was injured, and there was no working smoke alarm inside. Chicago police said the man was 59 years old and had burns on his body. The Cook County medical examiner's office has not released his name or cause of death. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.  

A house in McHenry was left uninhabitable after a fire Thursday afternoon. The McHenry Township Fire Protection District responded to a fire in the 1900 block of Lakewood Avenue at 4 p.m. When crews arrived, they found a single story house with a heavy volume of smoke and fire throughout the interior, the fire district said. They initiated an "aggressive interior attack" by entering the house from the rear, according to a news release. Because the fire had extended into the attic,a hole was immediately cut in the roof to release the flames and heated gases from the interior. The home was occupied at the time of the fire. All residents exited, uninjured, before fire companies arrived. Although crews were able to cut off the spread of fire and contained it to only half of the building, the entire house sustained significant heat, smoke and water damage.  

Knox County is launching its emergency operation center to better respond to COVID-19. The partnership includes the local hospitals, schools, and governments. As of Wednesday, six people have been tested for COVID-19 in Knox County area. Two were negative, and four are pending. Bob Moore is president of Galesburg Cottage Hospital. "Our biggest concern now is keeping people out of the ER. The respiratory issues, which usually accounts for somewhere 20, 25 percent on any given day, anyway. We're trying to get them out of the ER, into appropriate places," he said. Moore said it's important people contact their primary care providers for direction before heading to the emergency department. OSF Saint Mary Medical Center president Lisa DeKezel says Galesburg's two major hospitals are working together to prepare for COVID-19's arrival in Knox County.  

An employee at a nursing home in Willowbrook does not want to return to work as coronavirus cases spread at the facility. The DuPage County of Health Department reports that all residents and staff of the Chateau Nursing and Rehabilitation Center have now been tested for COVID-19. So far, 46 tests have come back positive, that includes 33 residents and 13 staff members. Six people are hospitalized, and all others are in isolation. The outbreak began with a single resident testing positive last Saturday. It jumped to 22 on Tuesday, before more than doubling to 46 Wednesday. Certified nurse assistant Tonya Davis, who was sent by an agency, said she's not coming back. The nurse claims the facility is plagued by inadequate staffing and supplies. "They're going about it the wrong way. I'm doing patient care and trying to do everything at the proper standards that I'm supposed to and that I was trained for. And they're not allowing," she said.  

There were no injuries in a Thursday night Champaign house fire, responders said. Crews were called at 9:26 p.m. to 4412 Curtis Meadow Drive, where they said a neighbor reported seeing a fire at a two-story house. The fire began on the side of the structure. Firefighters quickly extinguished the fire using multiple hose lines. They found the fire was in the laundry room of the house. Nobody was home at the time.  

Knowing that firefighters have to protect themselves to help others, Worthington officials worried about having their 36 full-time staff working together in its single fire station. "We were hearing about these other stations being forced to shut down elsewhere. That would decimate our fire and EMS protection if we had to close our firehouse," said Mark Zambito, assistant fire chief. So in a brainstorming session, he asked about the now-closed community recreation center. With a large, now empty, parking lot, showers, a kitchen and makeshift bunk room, "everything we needed was there," he said. Setting up the station this week, on Highland Avenue, less than a mile from its High Street station, became urgent. "I looked at one of my captains and said, ‘I need you to stock it in two days.'" Capt. Chris Betts assembed beds and living quarters for three firefighters. A kitchen was stocked with supplies and food. A craft/activity room now has three beds.  

"If you see this message — this means your files are now encrypted and are in a non-working state!" That note was discovered on the Bluffton Township Fire District's computer servers on Sunday, which were rendered inoperable by a hacker, according to a report from the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office. Staff at the fire department discovered they could not log into their computers Sunday and alerted Information Technology staff, who discovered that records, files and email communications had been encrypted. Late Sunday night, they reported the issue to the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office, S.C. Law Enforcement Division and Cyber Crimes unit for the F.B.I. Personal information on the fire department's servers was not accessed in the hack, and the department's ability to respond to emergencies was not affected, Bluffton Fire Capt. Lee Levesque said.  

Fox's "The Resident" is doing its part to protect the residents -- and other health care workers -- at an Atlanta-area hospital amid the spread coronavirus. Dr. Karen L. Law, who is the program director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Emory University, posted a photo to Instagram on Wednesday showing off a donation of masks, gowns and other supplies made by the team behind the medical drama. A spokesman for Disney Television Studios, which produces the series, confirmed the donation to CNN. "To the entire team @theresidentonfox, thank you for this incredibly generous donation of #PPE from your set, including gowns, masks, gloves, and all the things our healthcare workers need to provide safe care for our community during #COVID19," Law wrote. "Yesterday, I had a serious discussion with the residents about how, though supplies are low, a magical shipment of masks is unlikely to arrive. And yet, a magical shipment of masks DID arrive, in the form of this very generous gesture."  

More than 30 members of the Spokane Fire Department are in self-quarantine in an attempt to stop the spread of sickness amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The firefighters – representing about 10% of the department –were exposed to patients who had symptoms similar to COVID-19. As of Thursday morning, none of them had received a positive test for the novel coronavirus – though one firefighter is in the hospital. Fire Chief Brian Schaeffer said the department must take extreme precautions to prevent the spread of the illness. And the department is shifting some operations in partnership with a neighboring fire district to allow firefighters to isolate themselves from family members if they are concerned about spreading illness to their families. Firefighters who normally respond from Spokane Fire Department Station No. 6 on the West Plains have a new home at Spokane County Fire District 10 Station No. 10-1 as Station No. 6 is turned into a quarantine facility for Spokane firefighters.  

The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) and other public safety and related industry organizations wrote to congressional leaders urging action on repealing the T-Band auction mandate on the nation's largest municipalities as part of any coronavirus emergency stimulus spending package. Read letter (PDF) "We write to strongly urge you to include language that would repeal Section 6103 in Title VI of P.L. 112-96 in any stimulus legislation related to the COVID-19 pandemic," the organizations wrote. "Such language will prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from being forced to auction and clear public safety communications from critical spectrum known as the T-Band (470 MHz-512 MHz). "As emergency medical service (EMS), fire department, police department personnel, and others work to keep their communities safe and healthy during the current crisis and in the future, it is imperative that these T-Band users know they will continue to have the resources they need to do their jobs on behalf of the public."