Firefighters battled a fire on the city's South Side that was caused by a gas leak. Crews were on the scene on the 8900 block of South Marshfield Avenue around 8 p.m. Tuesday. Sources said a contractor hit a pressure line and that may have caused the leak. No injuries have been reported. At least 60 customers were affected in the area due to the gas shut down. People's Gas is working to repair the line and restart services, the Chicago Fire Department said. Residents should expect service to be off for a few hours.  

Three months after receiving three proposals for paramedic services, North Riverside trustees appear ready to extend the village's contract with Paramedic Services of Illinois (PSI) for another five years, even though the company's proposal was the more expensive option. On Nov. 18, a majority of the village board said they would vote in favor of extending the deal with PSI, which has provided paramedic services for the village for more than three decades. But that extension was conditioned on the village administration pledging to explore the North Riverside Firefighters Union Local 2714 proposal to hire full-time and part-time paramedics in order to wean the village from its reliance on a private company.  

A company putting in fiber optic lines along Route 157 inadvertently caused a problem Monday evening. Edwardsville Fire Department Dep. Chief James Whiteford, Lt. Jeremy Paschall, and firefighter/paramedic Jake Sweetman responded to the Woodland Elementary School before 6 p.m. Monday night. Shortly after his arrival, Paschall said he saw a fire hydrant collapse beneath the ground as water continued to gush onto school grounds. "The fire hydrant separated from the water main due to potholing [digging small holes to find buried utilities] by the company installing fiber optic lines along 157," said City Engineer Ryan Zwijack by email Tuesday. He added that all of the city's fire hydrant service lines are six inches in diameter. Zwijack said Edwardsville Public Works completed repairs as the leak happened on the city's distribution system.  

Edwardsville Fire Department will mark a special occasion sometime before Dec. 10 — the arrival of a new fire engine. "Early last week, we sent a team up to do the final inspection at the factory," said Fire Chief Richard Welle. "Everything is all ready to go and they are putting on the final touches there. It will be shipped, possibly this week, down to this area. It goes to Freeburg, where they will do the final dealer prep at Sentinel [Emergency Solutions] and then it will be delivered." Welle will provide a more detailed update on the new fire apparatus at the Dec. 3 city council meeting.  

Peoria Firefighters dealt with high winds early Wednesday morning while putting out a house fire. Fire broke out around 4 a.m. in the 1100 block of NE Jefferson Street. Flames were seen coming from the first floor when crews arrived on the scene. Battalion Chief Nate Rice said the high winds made it difficult for crews to knock down the fire. Two people escaped without injury. Eight dogs were inside the home at the time of the fire. "They reported that there were still three (dogs) in the home that wouldn't have made it," Rice said. The cause of the fire remained under investigation.  

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.