Family, friends, and colleagues are remembering Chicago Fire Department paramedic Robert Truvillian, who died of COVID-19 last year. A 20-year Chicago Fire Department veteran, Truevillian worked out of Ambulance 71 in the South Deering neighborhood. He had been battling COVID-19 for about a month before he died last December. Tuesday morning, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and fellow firefighters were on hand as Truevillian's paramedic badge was added to the memorial wall at the Quinn Fire Academy. His wife and four children received hugs and praise for a job well done, and a life taken away too soon. Truevillian was 55 years old. He was the third active member of the Chicago Fire Department to die of COVID-19.  

A Woodstock first responder and veteran is running for firefighters who can't. Ryan Mains is training to run more than 70 miles in memory of firefighters who lost their lives to suicide. "It's a bit of an epidemic. Over 100 firefighters and paramedics die by suicide each year," said Mains. "That's been going on for a few years now. It's not something that's being talked about a lot, and it's something that need to be talked about." Mains ran 130 kilometers last year in memory of the 130 firefighters who died by suicide in 2019. This year he will be running 115 kilometers to raise money for the Illinois Firefighter Peer Support Group. The cause is personal for Mains. He received help from the Illinois Firefighter Peer Support Group and wants to make sure other firefighters know about it.  

Police, firefighters, and paramedics from Arlington Heights responded about 12:39 p.m. Tuesday, May 18, 2021 to a report of an odor of natural gas in the area of Verde Drive and Plymouth Court in Arlington Heights. The natural gas odor was reported to be coming from the area where construction workers were active as part of the Greenbrier Public Improvements Project 2021. A few neighbors in the Greenbrier neighborhood contacted us with concerns about what was happening in their neighborhood. At 1:01 p.m. an ambulance was dispatched for a person experiencing a headache connected with the outside gas odor. Engine 2's crew on arrival reported gas blowing out of the ground with Nicor already on the scene.  

Nelson School in Niles was evacuated after a window ventilation unit began filling a classroom with smoke this morning (Tuesday). Niles Fire Chief Marty Feld said there was no actual fire and the school was evacuated out of an abundance of caution. Firefighters were dispatched to the East Maine Dist. 63 school, located at 8901 Ozanam Ave., for a possible working fire at 10:47 a.m. Tuesday. Feld said the window unit is suspected to have seized, causing it to fill the classroom with smoke. Smoke from the wall ventilation unit was confined to the one classroom. No injuries were reported. Once the first arriving firefighters determined the cause of the smoke was not a working fire, additional fire units still en route to the school were called off. Feld said fire department units were expected to clear from the school at about 11:20 a.m.  

VIDEO: Sacramento area firefighters are facing some new challenges on emergency calls. A man is going up to crews with a camera while they're on calls, often peppering them with foul language and intimidation. Video shows the man behind the camera verbally confronting fire crews and coming right up to firefighters with taunting language. "It's extremely concerning to us," said Roberto Padilla, a spokesperson with Sacramento Area Firefighters 522. The firefighters union spokesman says run-ins with this man have happened on multiple occasions. "He's antagonizing people, he's insulting them, he's trying to get a rise out of them," Padilla said. "That's not acceptable behavior." "I would like to know what his motive is," said Walt White, a Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District board member. White, who is also a former Sacramento Fire chief, says the confrontations appear unprovoked.  

For the first time in its history, Albuquerque Fire Rescue now has a behavioral health director. AFR Behavioral Health Director Maia Dalton-Theodore will be tasked with supporting the mental health needs of the department's firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs. "I really look forward to continuing the ongoing mission of normalizing the ability for people to ask for help and reducing the stigma, and also to continue the work around behavioral health for this department," she said. AFR Deputy Chief Sean Frazier said being in this line of work can take a big toll on a firefighter's mental health. "If you can just picture the absolute worse of humanity, or imagine the absolute worse of humanity that what our men and women are exposed to on a daily basis. So you have the one time trauma from going and seeing a horrific scene, but you also have the chronic cumulative trauma that just builds up after seeing that over and over and over again," he said.  

Sixty-six emergency communications districts in Tennessee experienced service interruptions, lasting more than 97 hours, as a result of the Christmas morning suicide bombing on Second Avenue in downtown Nashville, according to a report released earlier this month by the Tennessee Emergency Communications Board. Working in tandem with AT&T, the contractor for the state's emergency communications system, the board made contact with each 911 district impacted by the bombing and unveiled its report at a board meeting on May 5. The AT&T hub was among the buildings blasted when, according to police, a suicide bomber detonated a device inside an RV parked just 20 feet from the building. The goal of the report was to identify the impact of the Christmas morning bombing on 911 systems, what went wrong that the impact on the 66 districts and what can be done to avoid similar situations should disaster strike an emergency communications system again.  

Atlanta is set to build its first "micro station" for emergency medical services in southwest Atlanta to shorten response times to 911 calls. The City Council on Monday voted to approve up to $4 million in bonds that the city will borrow to fund the new station. It will be located at 4532 Campbellton Road on property that is owned by the city, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms said in a press release. The Atlanta Fire Rescue Foundation will also consider additional funding from the private sector. Construction for a new, full-sized fire station can normally cost up to $15 million, Bottoms' office said. The micro station will allow the city to save money by stationing ambulances and other EMS vehicles at a small location.  

Tuesday was a "landmark day," as the United States reached a new COVID-19 vaccine milestone: 60% of adults have now received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the US Centers and Disease Control and Prevention. But vaccination rates across the United States are uneven -- a worrisome trend that could obstruct efforts to end the COVID-19 pandemic. Rates range from more than 78% of adults in Vermont with at least one vaccine to less than 45% of adults in Mississippi. And over the past week, states with higher vaccination rates have generally had lower COVID-19 case rates, a CNN analysis of data from the CDC and Johns Hopkins University found. Seven states have already reached the Biden administration's goal of vaccinating at least 70% of adults with at least one shot by July 4, data from CDC shows: Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont.