Lightning struck a home in Joliet, sparking a fire that killed an 85-year-old man who was trapped inside. The East Joliet Fire Protection District confirms lightning caused a smoky fire at Raymond Ziegler's home. One neighbor shared video of the storm that he said woke him up. He was across the street when lightning hit his neighbor's house. "During the weather that we were having, the severity of the lightning it just hit and took the house with it," said Deputy Fire Chief Matt Grohar, East Joliet Fire Protection District. Neighbors told firefighters when they arrived that Ziegler lived alone in the home. "There was furniture and many other obstacles that were in the house at the time which compromised getting in and success maneuvering inside," Grohar said.  

VIDEO: A man was found dead Wednesday afternoon after his boat left the Fox River in McHenry County, hit a tree and caught fire in a backyard, local officials said. McHenry County Sheriff's deputies and McHenry firefighters responded about 3:40 p.m. to the 2400-block of South Riverview Drive in Holiday Hills for a report of a boat on fire. Emergency responders found a speedboat and its sole occupant, a deceased man, in a backyard in the area. Police said the boat he was driving left the river and landed on the shore, and a witness put out the flames and found the man trapped between the boat and a tree. He appeared to be dead, and the witness called 911.  

VIDEO/PHOTOS: Several people in Geneseo are safe thanks to a neighbor who alerted them to a fire in their home. It broke-out Wednesday night around 7:30. The home, which is a former church, is located at Center and Pearl Streets near City Park. The Geneseo Fire Department told TV6 that multiple people managed to escape. One person was treated for smoke inhalation. Departments from Geneseo, Cambridge, and Atkinson were on-scene fighting the flames for hours in extreme heat and humidity. Firefighters could be seen taking short breaks, trying to hydrate. Community members brought them food and water. No word yet on the cause of the fire.  

VIDEO/PHOTOS: A fire that officials say started from welding sparks destroyed a house in Hurricane on Wednesday afternoon and for a time threatened Hurricane Middle School and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' seminary building. There were no injuries and by 4:58 p.m., the fire was contained. The fire was first reported as a brush fire at 3:41 p.m., provoking a response from Hurricane wildfire crews. But the flames spread to an adjacent home located on at 366 W. 300 North. Flames and smoke could be seen rising out of the home into the Hurricane sky. Officials initially said the sparks that started the fire came from the junkyard, but Hurricane Valley Fire Battalion Chief Nick Wright said it was actually someone working on the house.  

When Jeff Bowen was growing up in Southern California he would walk home from school by a fire station. One day, after the 6-year-old did not come home, his mother, Laurel Bowen, said she went looking for him at the station where she knew some of the firefighters. A captain pointed her inside. "He said, 'You know he stops every day to talk to us.'" The boy was sitting in the driver's seat of a fire engine. After his mother expressed her concern, he said to her, "Mom, I want you to know something. I'm going to drive one of these one day," his mother recalled. He did. After putting out wildfires in California, Jeff Bowen moved to Asheville where he was promoted to fire department engineer and later captain. On July 28, 2011, the day a four-alarm blaze ripped through a medical building at 445 Biltmore Ave., Laurel Bowen and other family members came to the scene.  

Last week at a media conference Vice Admiral Roy Kitchener, the commander of US Navy warships, outlined the actions that have been taken since the Bonhomme Richard caught fire in San Diego last year… and he has completely missed the point. "We found that in some cases maybe we weren't doing as well as we should have," Kitchener told US Naval Institute editor Sam LaGrone. "We're pretty good at firefighting at sea and all those procedures. When we got to the industrial environment, it was ‘OK, looks like we need to kind of make sure there's a little bit of education." His solution? The Admiral and his team decided to "beef up the safety staff" and added a mix of civilian and military fire marshals to check ships on the waterfront and in the yard. He didn't mention that crews did not have THE single most basic piece of equipment needed to fight large ship fires: a fireboat.  

A year and a half into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world looks a lot different than it used to. And so does the coronavirus itself. As it's infected hundreds of millions of people around the globe, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been in a state of constant change, making small tweaks to its genetic code as it goes along. New variants have taken over from the virus's earlier forms — like the highly contagious delta variant that is currently throwing a wrench in our "new normal." Here, we break down what you need to know about the viral variants sweeping the world. The coronavirus, like other viruses, spreads by hijacking human cells to make copies of itself. But that process isn't always perfect: Sometimes, the copied versions of the virus have a few typos in their genetic code. This means the coronavirus is constantly mutating as it spreads.