Chicago has the largest number of women fighting fires and working on ambulances of any city in the country, the city's fire commissioner said Wednesday, but they make up less than 10% of the department's total personnel. In a department that has long dealt with diversity issues, aldermen also pressed Chicago Fire Department officials to better address the under-representation of black and Latino firefighters on the force, an annual complaint when officials come to City Hall for their budget hearing. Commissioner Richard Ford II called on aldermen to help get more minorities to take tests to get on the force. "When we do our outreach for recruitment, we really don't have control over who is coming in to take this test," Ford said.  

In July, the Illinois Fire Chiefs Association released a 198-page report known as a Functional Consolidation Feasibility Study. The study focused on many aspects of fire and ambulance service in Quincy and Adams County. One of the findings of the study, which cost taxpayers $25,000, was that moving ambulances into specific Quincy fire stations would improve response times and coverage. The study suggests moving Adams County EMS-owned ambulances to Central Fire Station, Station 3 and Station 4. However, a question posed during a recent town hall meeting got Quincy Fire Chief Joe Henning and others thinking about a different scenario. "The question was that if we did not have an ALS apparatus at Station 5, would the recommendation have been to put an ambulance there rather than one of the other stations listed? The response was yes, so that is what made us start thinking about Station 5."  

Woodstock Fire/Rescue District had a rare occurrence last week: an actual working structure fire. "We don't have those too often," Capt. Brendan Parker said of the blaze in the 800 block of West Avenue in west Woodstock. A woman, the lone occupant of the home at the time of a fire Oct. 23, escaped without injury, Parker said. After the fire was out, relatives of the woman found her cat in the house unharmed. "It most likely looks like it started in the garage," Parker said, though he noted the fire was still under investigation. He said the house had working smoke detectors, but the woman apparently fled after hearing commotion in the garage. How rare are structure fires in Woodstock? Of the 458 calls the district responded to in September, only four were fire calls, and none matched the scope of last week's call.  

A longtime downtown business burned to the ground Wednesday morning as firefighters worked to put out hot spots and determine the cause. The fire at Diesel Dick's, 508 N. Madison St., was reported at 6:40 a.m. The stubborn fire threatened a nearby apartment house and strip mall, which firefighters fought to keep safe. No injuries were reported. At least two walls of the Diesel Dick's building collapsed. A man who periodically stays in the building was not there and has been accounted for, said Bloomington Fire Department spokesman Eric Davison. Almost three hours after the fire was reported, Davison said, "We're just going after hotspots. There's still a lot of smoke." The department, on its Facebook page, asked the public to supply any photos or video they may have as firefighters work to determine a cause.  

While the Park Ridge Fire Department was planning to replace its tower ladder truck from Station 36 at Oakton and Greenwood in the next year or so, this summer's explosive fire in July at the former Marathon gas station at Oakton and Northwest Highway has radically moved up the priorities for ordering. Fire Chief Jeff Sorensen reported Monday night (Oct. 28) at the Committee of the Whole meeting that two of the ladder's three sections had been damaged and no longer can be used. The truck, known as F-45, went through a stress test after the fire. The department was told that trying to repair the ladder would cost a quarter of a million dollars, and it still would not be safe to use because the new parts would not fit together well enough. Exposed to a corrosive material during the fire also degraded metal fittings and connections.  

First responders rush through the streets to save lives every day, but that comes with a risk and, sometimes, a cost. With more than 30 crashes involving Jacksonville police and fire vehicles last week, city leaders are once again concerned about safety. The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office alone had 24 crashes last week, with the officers at fault in 17 of them. Jacksonville Fire-Rescue vehicles were involved in seven additional crashes, and five were found to be the firefighters' fault. Because of past incidents and maintenance, 54 JSO vehicles are out of service out of 1,700 vehicles in its fleet. An additional 22 JFRD and 79 other city vehicles are offline for maintenance. Earlier this year, the I-Team reported that crashes of city vehicles cost taxpayers an average of more than $1.5 million each year.  

Ever wonder how fire agencies decide who and when to evacuate? It's not a decision made on a hunch. It requires making sense of huge amounts of real-time data and intelligence, and getting it wrong or late can have tragic consequences. Not than long ago, fatalities in California's wildfires were very rare. But the rapidly accelerating pace and size of fires in the state has taken a heavy toll. Last year's Camp Fire left more than 80 people dead and all but wiped out the town of Paradise. The Tubbs Fire, which ravaged wine country in 2017, resulted in more than 20 deaths. And the Woolsey Fire destroyed more than 1,600 homes in Ventura County last fall, leaving three people dead in its wake. To help minimize this loss of life and property, the Los Angeles Fire Department and other agencies use cutting-edge technology to model and predict what a fire's going to do next and use that information to figure out who needs to evacuate.  

If you have a heart attack in Harlowe, according to resident and former firefighter Rufus Carter, you are in serious trouble: it's going to take the ambulance an average of 18 minutes and 22 seconds to get there. If you live in nearby Adams Creek, the response time is even longer. That's the longest average response time for EMS in the county by nine and a half minutes (in Fort Barnwell) and nearly 11 minutes longer than the county's quickest (Township 7). While the Harlowe and Adams Creek community has its own fire department, it must rely on Havelock EMS for ambulance calls. Many in the community think its time for that change. "EMS is needed here," Carter, one resident leading the push, said. He said the county commissioners have been reluctant to raise the community's taxes to cover a local EMS base – "It would raise the taxes up from 1 to 5 cents," he believes – but he feels that wouldn't matter. "What's more important? A life, or raising the tax?"  

Chicago has the largest number of women fighting fires and working on ambulances of any city in the country, the city's fire commissioner said Wednesday, but they make up less than 10% of the department's total personnel. In a department that has long dealt with diversity issues, aldermen also pressed Chicago Fire Department officials to better address the under-representation of black and Latino firefighters on the force, an annual complaint when officials come to City Hall for their budget hearing. Commissioner Richard Ford II called on aldermen to help get more minorities to take tests to get on the force. "When we do our outreach for recruitment, we really don't have control over who is coming in to take this test," Ford said. "What I would like to do is work with the aldermen, work with (Department of Human Resources) to increase that list, and thereby increase the diversity."  

The California wildfires and PG&E's incompetence are having a terrifying impact on the residents of California, who face not only immense risk to life and property, but a growing number of power and telecom-related outages that make a bad problem worse. There are more than a dozen wildfires currently raging across California, and heavy winds this week are only expected to exacerbate the problem. PG&E plans to cut power to more than half a million California residents this week as the ill-prepared company attempts to mitigate harm caused by its antiquated infrastructure. The fires and power outages are also having a profound impact on the state's telecom networks. According to data released by the FCC, 874 of the state's 26,000 cell sites were out on Monday, up from 630 on Sunday. Given the majority of these sites have no backup power, they're useless once fire or PG&E's rolling blackouts come knocking.