A Sunday morning fire caused heavy damage to a single-story home off of Slater Street. Four people were home when the fire broke out in the back room of the house, all of whom had vacated the structure by the time Fairbanks Fire Department and other stations arrived just after 9:30 a.m. Flames were reaching out of the back windows of the house when fire personnel arrived on the scene, damaging the interior walls and the roof. "There is heavy damage I would say," said Scott Raygor, battalion chief at Fairbanks Fire Department. "It's going to take a lot of work. The frame is probably good but heavy damage to the interior." Fire teams were able to contain the blaze before it reached the nearby garage or any other homes. No human injuries were reported but some pets are possibly missing, Raygor noted. The blaze was knocked down in about 20 minutes and under control in about an hour, Raygor said. Fort Wainwright Fire Station and University Fire Department assisted Fairbanks Fire on the call.  

The city intends to hire a professional fire service consultant to conduct an examination and analysis of the administration, operations, training and deployment practices of the Fire Department. The study will include a master plan for the Fire Department that will assess its internal operations and staffing, and provide a gap analysis of its current situation against national standards and best practices, according to City Manager Edward M. Augustus Jr. Simultaneous with that study, Augustus said, he will conduct a review of the Division of Inspectional Services, since it works with the Fire Department to ensure the safety of all buildings in the city. The manager said a coordinated approach by both departments is critical to keeping residents and first responders safe.  

VIDEO: It's not just for video games anymore. The Myrtle Beach Fire Department is now using virtual reality as a way to better educate the community on what it's like to be a firefighter. Firefighters plan to debut the technology to students at Pathways to Possibilities next week at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. The hope is to get younger kids interested in a career in the fire service. When the headset is put on, the video immerses the viewer in a 360-degree video, taking the viewer from sitting at a table preparing for the day inside Fire Station 1 to rushing out on a call. Myrtle Beach fire Capt. John Evans said that they received money from the Horry Georgetown Fire Chiefs Association and worked with the IT department in the city of Myrtle Beach to get the 360-degree camera and make it happen. Evans said when they were first researching ideas on how to use new technology, he noticed other departments weren't using this.  

After a photo believed to have been taken last year of a D.C. Fire recruit class showed three white men making what looked like an "OK symbol" with their hands, an internal investigation found they were not aware the hand gesture is associated with white supremacy. Weeks before an internal investigation cleared three members of recruit class 387, D.C. Council member Charles Allen, D-Ward 6, asked about the photo in question at a council committee hearing. "I see diversity in the class, but I only see the symbol being displayed by white men, so that to me gives me major cause of concern," Allen said. D.C. Fire Chief Gregory Dean said, "Racist symbols are not consistent with our core values." The internal investigative report obtained by WTOP found the symbol was part of a game that some members of the class would play called the circle game, where they would display an upside-down OK hand gesture below their waist.  

Paramedic Trent Bowers received a call on a recent January night: A woman had been beaten at a St. Louis Family Dollar store. When Bowers arrived, the woman showed him injuries across her body. "This looks like it's out of place," he said, looking at her knee. He suggested she take the ambulance to the hospital, but the woman said she couldn't afford it without insurance. In less than an hour, a recording of the exchange reached hundreds of thousands of viewers on national TV's "Live Rescue," an A&E reality series that features "almost live" feeds of fire crews and emergency medical service units in seven U.S. cities. Since its premiere in April, the St. Louis Fire Department has been one of the show's most reliable stars. Last month, fire officials agreed to participate in a third season.  

When firefighter Richard "Dick" Boyer responded to a fire call at the Reading YMCA on a bitter cold morning in January 1985, he immediately sensed something wasn't right. "The fire hose on the sidewalk was burning, and the handle on the Knox box had melted," recalled Boyer, 76, a retired Reading fire chief. In the moments that followed, Boyer would discover the tragic reason that caused a fire so intense it consumed a hose intended to destroy it. A flashover, a type of incendiary explosion that erupted in the kitchen, unleashed a firestorm that swept down a hallway, through the lobby and up the stairways of the first three floors of the six-story structure at Washington and Reed streets. In its wake, the killer fire claimed the lives of a firefighter and three YMCA residents, and badly burned two other firefighters.