The two people that perished last month in a Ketchikan house fire have been identified by the blaze's lone survivor. A memorial service is planned for the two victims later this week. Jeanine Burbary credits her husband, Nick Burbary, with getting her out of the blaze alive. "I would like people to know that he saved my life. And he died trying to save my daughter's life," she said in an interview Wednesday. She said she woke to smoke alarms blaring on the morning of Dec. 30. She rushed upstairs to the kitchen to find her husband laying on the floor near the stove. Flames were rising from the glass cooktop. "He suffered from a seizure disorder. So I don't know if maybe he had a seizure, and who knows how long he was laying there," she told KRBD. She said she grabbed a fire extinguisher, but couldn't pull the pin. She yelled at Nick, 41, to wake up, she said. "And he came to. And just so quick — the whole house just filled with black smoke. And he started yelling at me to get out, get out, get out," she said.  

VIDEO: A large fire broke out at an apartment complex near the Industrial Canal in New Orleans East Wednesday night. The cause of the fire is not yet known, but it appears to have broken out at or near the Gentilly Ridge apartment complex off of Chef Menteur Highway. NOFD officials say the complex has about 100 units in it, about 90 of them occupied. The building does have firewalls, but officials said the flames spread through the attic, bypassing many of them. No injuries were reported Wednesday night, but firefighters are still processing the scene to make sure all of the residents made it out safely. A traffic camera on I-10 near Old Gentilly Road appears to show a plume of dark smoke rising from a fire near the Industrial Canal.  

The Thornton Fire Department is one of the first in the country to use new technology to monitor firefighters who were exposed to COVID-19. The department is using the Masimo Pulse Oximeter on quarantined firefighters to check their health status and be notified of a health decline. The device measures oxygen saturation, pulse and breathing rate, circulation and respiratory quality. "Each call, incident, and encounter continued to place firefighters at risk," said Thornton Fire Community Safety & Information Officer Sabrina Iacovetta. "Precautions were taken to protect firefighters with equipment, policy and guidelines, and despite all efforts, individuals were affected." Alerts for abnormal readings are available 24/7, the department says.  

Electric vehicle fires pose safety risks to first responders and guidelines from manufacturers about how to deal with them have been inadequate, according to U.S. investigators. There are also gaps in industry safety standards and research on high-voltage lithium-ion battery fires, especially in high-speed, severe crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday. The agency, which has no enforcement powers and can only make recommendations, called for manufacturers to write vehicle-specific response guides for fighting battery fires and limiting chemical thermal runaway and reignition. The guidelines also should include information on how to safely store vehicles with damaged lithium-ion batteries. The recommendations come at a time when automakers are rolling out multiple new electric vehicle models, with many in the industry perceiving an inflection point in switching from gasoline power to cleaner electricity.  

To the known risk factors for developing severe COVID-19—age, male sex, or any of a series of underlying conditions—a new study adds one more: high levels of the virus in your saliva. Standard COVID-19 tests sample the nasal passage. But several new tests look for SARS-CoV-2, the pandemic coronavirus, in saliva, and the new work finds a striking correlation between high virus levels there and later hospitalization or death. If the results are confirmed, saliva tests could help doctors prioritize which patients in the early stages of the disease should receive medicines that drive down levels of the virus. "I thought it was pretty striking," says Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, who was not involved with the research. Crotty notes the results suggest virus levels in saliva reflect viral load deep in the lungs, where the disease does much of its damage in severe cases. "That is a fundamentally valuable insight," Crotty says.  

Broadview Heights Fire Chief Jeffrey Hajek is giving 19 News a first-hand look at a new piece of technology his department uses to save precious seconds when getting to an emergency. It's called the HAAS Safety Cloud System. The device alerts drivers to move over because emergency vehicles are coming through. Hajek knows has seen the frustrating problem himself of cars not getting out of the way. "We've had accidents & they've actually gone higher because people are more distracted with technology," he said. So how does it work? The small device sends notifications to any GPS Navigation software like Waze or Apple Maps. "Saying these vehicles are here & they are coming towards you or have stopped on the side of the road, so it's real-time, so it's great for drivers," Hajek said. The alerts can not only save the life of a person in dire need of help… but it can save an EMT or firefighter from getting into a tragic accident while racing to the scene of an emergency.