The Converse Fire Department is mourning the sudden loss of one of its own. According to CFD Chief Luis Valdez, retired Assistant Fire Chief Steve Harris recently passed. Harris, who served with the department from 1986 to 2005, was described as a viral part in establishing the emergency medical services for the department. A cause of death has not been released, Valdez described it as a surprise to him and the department.  

VIDEO: A four-car crash killed two people, one of whom flew off the Trinity River Bridge, Sunday night in Liberty County. Deputies arrived just after 8 p.m. to SH-105 at the bridge, where they found the wreckage of three vehicles. They found the driver of a Ford Mustang and immediately began CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. A white Chevrolet Equinox with heavy rear damage had two adults, a 6-month-old and a 15-year-old inside. The passenger in the front seat had minor injuries. The teen was flown to the hospital with a possible broken hip. The driver of the Equinox was not hurt. A driver in a blue Chevrolet pickup suffered minor injuries. Twenty minutes later, a trooper saw a piece of debris hanging on the guard rail of the bridge. When he looked over the side, he saw a black BMW upside down. When firefighters reached the car, they found the driver dead.  

An early-morning fire Monday just west of the Stephen F. Austin State University campus displaced numerous residents. A Nacogdoches officer on patrol spotted flames coming from an apartment building at around 3:15 a.m. Monday in the 1800 block of North Street. The fire had spread to multiple units. Firefighters used ladders to rescue some residents from the balconies of upstairs units. One person was taken to a hospital with minor injuries. Food left on a stove ignited the fire, investigators said. Residents were forced to flee their apartments into the early-morning cold. The Stephen F. Austin Police Department assisted in transporting displaced residents who needed shelter from the cold and the Red Cross is housing displaced residents at local hotels.  

Three adults and an infant were forced into the cold because of an intense fire at a home in Terrell, east of Dallas. Firefighters from Terrell and Forney were called to help put out the flames just before midnight Sunday. All four people who were home at the time made it out safely but the family's dog did not. The home was also a total loss. The American Red Cross is now providing for the family. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.  

PHOTO: Irion County (Mertzon Station) Volunteer Fire Department accepted an excess military Stewart Stevenson and a $20,000 grant. The grant helped with the addition of a slip-on unit that transformed the truck into a firefighting machine, increasing the capacity of the department's fleet. The truck was received through the Department of Defense Federal Property Program (DoD FFP) and the grant was awarded through the Rural Volunteer Fire Department Assistance Program, both administered by Texas A&M Forest Service. "The VFD members did a lot of the conversion themselves," said Irion County (Mertzon Station) Fire Chief Bill Taylor. "We added an 800-gallon water tank and a 20-gallon Scotty Foam System that will be very beneficial in our area for oil field fires. The foam creates a barrier between the hydrocarbons and the oil and helps to suffocate the fire."  

If you had an accident or medical emergency at home, would you child, or children, know what to do? Corpus Christi Fire Chief Robert Rocha said the important thing is for parents to communicate with their kids, and make sure they know how to call 9-1-1. They should also know their address. On the medical side, if someone is injured, teach the child how to put the patient in a comfortable position, and they should also make sure the injured person can breathe. But Rocha stresses, the most important skill young children should know is how to make that 9-1-1 call. "While units are en route to the scene, the dispatcher will give critical instructions to the caller so, such as is the person breathing?" he said. "Where is the person located? Different questions that will elicit a response, so that the response can be jotted down by the dispatchers and can be transmitted to the oncoming fire and EMS units."  

VIDEO: Fire Chief Michael Williams has seen and fought his fair share of fires in his 34-year career in Brockton. But when it comes to 2 1/2-story homes, few fires rival the difficulty of the one battled late Monday night in the city. "This is one of the toughest fires I've ever fought in a 2 1/2-story home," Williams said at the scene. "It all relates back to that wind condition. We had a really hard time containing the fire and then extinguishing it. I can only attribute that to the wind conditions." With fire shooting through windows and the roof and winds whipping, firefighters battled a two-alarm blaze in a two-family home late Monday night and into early Tuesday morning. The Brockton Fire Department responded to a report of a house fire at 582-584 Crescent St. at about 10:55 p.m. The first firefighters on scene found smoke coming from the rear of the home. They then located fire at the back of the home, Williams said. The fire then quickly began shooting through second-floor windows of the home.  

An oversized, multicolored quilt, deemed the "Quilt of the Angels," was draped over the altar at the Church of the Holy Family in Little Italy for Sunday's 5 p.m. Mass. The names and ages of all 95 victims from the Our Lady of Angels School fire in 1958 are stitched on each patch. "It's beautiful, isn't it?" said Larry Furio, a survivor of the tragic blaze that resulted in stricter fire safety codes nationwide. Tuesday marks the 62nd anniversary of the Our Lady of Angels School fire that killed 92 elementary-school students and three nuns. On Sunday, about 50 people gathered for Mass at the Church of the Holy Family to remember the lives lost, the families of the victims, the survivors and the first responders. During the ceremony, Furio and his lifelong friend and fellow survivor, Frank Giglio, read off the names of each victim. Several people in the congregation wiped tears from their eyes while others bowed their heads.  

In an exclusive interview with ABC10 News, a firefighter shared his heroic story of helping battle the massive fire that erupted aboard the USS Bonhomme Richard this past July. "It was a crazy situation," said Deputy Fire Chief Robert Sepulveda with Navy Region Southwest Fire Emergency Services. "We [had] about 400-plus firefighters on-scene at the time," he stated and added, "I was on the front lines with the firefighters and was directing the fire attack on the forward side of the ship at that time." His first shift lasted for 30 hours. It took almost a week to knock it all down. "What I was feeling at that time was obviously fear and wanting to make sure that everyone was safe on-scene and make sure I had that command presence to be able to unify everybody," he told ABC10 News. He has now received a civilian of the year award for his heroic actions.  

The committee that decides who gets the coronavirus vaccine first meets virtually Tuesday as officials prepare for distribution that could potentially come within two weeks. Look for discussion of two questions: Where should people in long-term care facilities be in the vaccine line and the power of states and governors to shift priorities for who gets immunized first. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is an independent group convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to offer advice on who should get specific vaccines and when. It typically deals with less time-sensitive questions such as what age people should get the shingles vaccine (50 and over) or whether adults need a whooping cough booster (under discussion.) When a pediatrician says, "It's time for the second polio immunization," it's based on ACIP recommendations.  

In a project for the Defense Department's Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), computer scientists have turned to artificial intelligence and aerial imagery to construct a detailed damage assessment solution. The tool can be used remotely and automatically to determine the amount of damage to buildings and structures from a natural disaster or catastrophe. The prototype, known as the xView II model, was tested this fall, with the goal of rolling out a more finalized operational version next year. "One of the biggest problems that faces our first responders today is building damage assessment," Gupta shares. "Building damage assessment is actually a very critical task that happens early on in order to support the rest of the disaster response. But it is a very dangerous task. For example, with the wildfires in California, [they] pretty much have a 24- to 48-hour period to go in, figure out what buildings are damaged, how badly damaged they are, and where the damage occurred."