A community meeting held Monday night brought residents, health advocates and stakeholders together to discuss concerns about remediation for contaminated soil. The soil is contaminated with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, most commonly from firefighting foams. There are many communities across the country and in Alaska struggling with the aftermath of firefighting foams contaminating ground water, including Moose Creek, Alaska. Mark Sanford with Organic Incineration Technology in Moose Creek has been working with the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Environmental Protection Agency to test using incineration to burn PFAS out of the soil. Now, there is question about where chemicals burned out of the soil go. Citizens for Clean Air, an advocacy group, held a community meeting at Moose Creek Fire Station to bring advocates, residents and stakeholders together to give residents a chance to ask questions.  

Easton is closing in on $1 million in overtime in 2019 for its fire department, increasing the likelihood that it will bring in part-time personnel in 2020. Despite adding three new full-timers earlier this year, the city has already eclipsed the $850,000 in overtime pay it expended in 2018, Finance Director Mark Lysynecky said during the city council meeting Tuesday. With two months left to be accounted for, the Easton Fire Department had already reached $993,000 through October, he said. The new additions bring the department's complement to 45, but the three new hires have come directly from the academy and won't be available to begin serving full-time until December, city Administrator Luis Campos said.  

The Portland City Council took what might look like a baby step last week toward more efficient handling of non-emergency 911 calls. In a break from current practice, in which uniformed, armed police officers in squad cars or a truckload of firefighters respond, commissioners approved a pilot project in which a new "third branch" of the first-responder system, staffed by a specially trained firefighter and a contracted crisis worker, would respond to some non-emergency situations. The program starts with just one two-person team. Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, architect of the two-responder pilot project, called Portland Street Response, framed it as a much bigger deal. "This is revolutionary," Hardesty said. "We have not changed our first-response system since the late 1800s."  

Sarah Mackin runs a cotton swab around the inside of a tiny plastic baggie that appears to be empty. She spreads whatever residue the swab picked up onto a test strip that resembles a Band-Aid, then slides the strip into a buzzing machine about the size of a boxed, take-home pie. Then she waits, hoping for information that she can share with Boston's community of opioid users. Mackin is using an MX908, a mass spectrometer initially marketed as a counterterrorism tool. The machine can help military teams looking for traces from biological or chemical weapons, or hazardous material specialists trying to identify materials used in spills or explosions. But now the MX908 has been commandeered in the fight against fentanyl, one of Boston's — and the nation's — top killers.  

You rely on their rapid "first response" to an emergency medical call to 9-1-1. You rely on their training, knowledge, and experience in first aid and ability to stabilize a patient -- possibly a love one -- to rush them to a hospital for more precise care. But how much do paramedics make? Paramedics' salaries vary depending on their state, their training, employer, and a host of other factors. But generally, it is less than you think -- and far less than, say, a plumber. According to ZipRecruiter.com, which has broken down average salaries by state and hourly wage, the average salary nationwide across all 50 states is $40,374.34, or $19.41 per hour. Average salaries range among the 50 states between $25,000 to $63,500, with the majority being between $35,500 and $47,500.  

Even though Boston's Cocoanut Grove fire happened long before she was born, Michele Shapiro learned all about the disaster when she was a girl. Her grandfather, Frank Shapiro, was at a nearby theater with his wife the night of Nov. 28, 1942, when a blaze tore through the swanky Cocoanut Grove nightclub, killing 492 people. The young lawyer helped with the rescue efforts and later represented the survivors and the estates of the victims. "I grew up hearing about this case because it was such a big part of his life," Michele Shapiro said. When she heard a filmmaker was making a documentary about the disaster, she had to get involved. The result is "Six Locked Doors: The Legacy of Cocoanut Grove," a nearly 70-minute film that features interviews with survivors in their 90s, many of whom never before talked publicly.