Chicago's oldest residential buildings would have until 2023 to install smoke detectors with 10-year batteries under a costly fire safety mandate advanced Monday over the objections of the Chicago Fire Department. Fire Commissioner Richard Ford II and Public Safety Committee chairman Chris Taliaferro (29th) are dead-set against the idea — and sounded the alarm during a recent closed-door meeting with Lightfoot's Office of Legislative and Governmental Affairs. They're concerned about the added cost to homeowners already absorbing a punishing parade of property tax increases. On Monday, Ald. Gilbert Villegas (36th), the mayor's City Council floor leader, ignored those objections, persuading his Zoning Committee colleagues to approve his ordinance on a 9-to-3 vote.  

On March 16, three Highland Park Fire Department personnel responded to an emergency call at a home in Highland Park where they cared for a patient who may have been exposed to COVID-19 due to recent international travel. The paramedics sought medical guidance from Highland Park Hospital and immediately after returning to the fire station, they were quarantined. The paramedics did not respond to any public calls or interact with other personnel following their return to the station. They will remain quarantined pending results from the patient's COVID-19 test. The ambulance they were operating has been disinfected and undergone a deep anti-viral cleaning. According to NorthShore University Health System, the Fire Department personnel have a very low risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus. Results are expected by Tuesday evening.  

The Charleston Fire Department responded to a fire on Monday night. Firefighters responded to 10 Division Street around 7:30 p.m. for a structure fire. Crews located smoke and fire coming from the north side of the old Brown Shoe Factory. Using an interior attack on the fire, firefighters were able to contain the fire to one room. The building is currently used for storage. There was minimal damage to the building. Most of the damage was limited to the room where the fire was. No one was inside at the time of the fire. The cause of the fire is under investigation.  

A 25-year-old mother and her 3-year-old son were unconscious and not breathing when they were pulled from a burning home in the 4100 block of Memorial Drive early Tuesday morning, Belleville fire Chief Tom Pour said. Firefighters responded to the fire just before 2 a.m. and found flames coming from most of the home's doors and windows. The mother of the 25-year-old woman managed to escape and went to neighbors for help. "The smoke was too thick," Pour said. "She thought they were right behind her coming out of the house because she could hear them, but she couldn't find them in the smoke." Firefighters pulled the woman and child from the home and performed CPR on them, then transported them to Memorial Hospital just two blocks away, Pour said.  

VIDEO: "Three, two, one," counted down a researcher with N.C. State University's Wilson College of Textiles. With a click, flames ignited and scorched a firefighter's helmet, protective hood and turn out gear. It's how the state is fighting cancer with fire power. Data gathered from the mannequin, which is armed with sensors and better known at N.C. State as "Pyroman," is just one tool researchers are using to better protect firefighters from carcinogens that increase their risk of cancer. The increased rates of cancer in the fire service have been a key topic for researchers and firefighters alike. In 2015, an IAFF study found particles of soot and smoke from structure fires could penetrate a firefighter's turnout gear and could be contributing to the spike in cancer rates among firefighters.  

Leaders of several Cleveland suburbs are making plans that could see them share police officers and firefighters in the event of a coronavirus outbreak in their departments. Officials from Lyndhurst, Richmond Heights, Highland Heights, Mayfield Heights and Mayfield Village met Friday in Lyndhurst for a preliminary discussion about sharing resources if a coronavirus outbreak impacts them. The goal is to have a plan for a worst-case scenario where one city's police officers or firefighters are forced to self-isolate and cannot work, Lyndhurst Mayor Patrick Ward said Monday. "We are confident but cautious," Ward said. "We're confident we're going to get through this but cautious by assuring we're making all the plans we need to make."  

After the first case of covid-19, the disease caused by the new strain of coronavirus, was announced in the United States, reports of further infections trickled in slowly. Two months later, that trickle has turned into a steady current. This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May. That is math, not prophecy. The spread can be slowed, public health professionals say, if people practice "social distancing" by avoiding public spaces and generally limiting their movement. Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population. We will call our fake disease simulitis. It spreads even more easily than covid-19: whenever a healthy person comes into contact with a sick person, the healthy person becomes sick, too.  

The quarantining of three firefighters who responded to Alaska's first confirmed case of the coronavirus came out of caution, not because of a lapse, Anchorage's fire chief said Monday. The firefighters, who responded to a 911 call about the case last week, took standard measures to protect against infectious disease, said Chief Jodie Hettrick. But at the time, federal and other guidance about the best measures to specifically protect against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, was not entirely settled, Hettrick added. "Because no one across the state or the nation was 100% comfortable with where we were, we just wanted to be cautious and make sure that our people are taken care of — and we didn't miss something and then expose everybody else," Hettrick said in an interview Monday. "This will not happen in the future — we believe the science is settled for how to prevent it and prevent exposure from our people."