VIDEO/PHOTOS: Eight people were injured in an apartment building explosion Tuesday morning in the South Austin neighborhood. A Chicago Fire Department spokesperson confirmed there was an explosion around 9 a.m. in a four-story apartment building at 5601 W. West End Ave. A total of 10 ambulances were sent to the scene, and at least eight people have been transported to hospitals. Two victims, a male and a female, were taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. Three victims, two males and a female, were taken to Mount Sinai Hospital. One female was taken to West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park. Two males were taken to Stroger Hospital of Cook County.  

In September 2020, in the face of COVID-19 and the city's budget, members of the Evanston Firefighters Association Local 742 union agreed to amend their collective bargaining agreement, foregoing salary increases instead of the 2.25% increases that had been negotiated for 2021 and 2022. At the Sept. 19 meeting, First Ward Council Member Clare Kelly made the recommendation firefighters receive a one-time payment, a compensation for their sacrifice. The council approved the payment to firefighters for the income losses – using $494,059 for 105 employees from federal American Recovery Protection Act funds. Speaking before the vote, Kelly expressed appreciation to firefighters, many of whom had to stay in hotels, away from home and families, during COVID-19.  

VIDEO: Surveillance video captured two men lighting multiple cars on fire early Saturday morning in Chicago's Homan Square. Around 2:45 a.m. Saturday in the 2800 block of W. Polk, police said two men set fire to three cars before leaving the scene. No injuries were reported. No one is in custody.  

A melted television, walls covered floor to ceiling in ashes, and an unrecognizable childhood bedroom. "I have a total loss," Beth Hughes said. Around midnight Monday, Hughes said her family was shaken awake by a loud noise, followed by black smoke, and rising flames. "All I knew was there was a fire and it was in her room. Chloe was the one that stated her hoverboard was blowing up. I thought everything was gonna explode. It was multiple bangs that happened back there," Hughes explained. Hughes said the fire started in her 8-year-old's bedroom. Now, parts of her home are burnt to a crisp with a charred hoverboard sitting at center focus. "It's heartbreaking," Hughes added.  

An old, abandoned warehouse building goes up in flames Tuesday evening in downtown Jackson. The facility, which used to be an old recycling building, is located at the intersection of Monument and Palmyra Streets. Crews with the Jackson Fire Department spent hours putting out the blaze. Chief Willie Owens says the fire broke out around 4 p.m. Chief Owens says no one was inside the building when the fire broke out. Firefighters tell us tires and plastic car parts were inside the abandoned building. Although the fire department was able to get the blaze contained, the chief said there were a few issues and challenges trying to dose the fire. "The challenge is trying to get close enough to the fire. As you can see, the powerlines up here, if we could've got a truck on this side, like a ladder truck, and if we could've got under those wires, we could've been much more effective," said Chief Owens.  

You expect to find firefighters at a fire department. But what you may not expect to find is a firefighting robot like the one on display at the Greenwood Fire Department in Moosic. It's called the Super Vac TAF 35 Mobile Firefighting Robot. It's remote-controlled and can pour 1,200 gallons of water a minute on a fire. "The video surveillance that it has on it also has thermal imaging, so it could help for looking for occupants in the building or looking for hotspots of the fire. right here in Moosic, we are looking at starting just over a million square foot warehouse, so that's a lot of ground to cover," said Buddy Miller, Greenwood Fire Department. "Sending an unmanned unit in, in the event of a potential collapse hazard, it allows you to get into the deep seed of a fire without endangering some of your firefighter lives," said Dana Shaffer, SuperVac Manufacturing.  

VIDEO: The Boston Fire Department's alarm boxes are the same as they ever were – 170 years on the job, and they still work. They are brightly colored, well-marked and appear every 1,000 feet on Boston streets. Still, the vast communications system has, through time and familiarity, become almost invisible — hidden in plain sight. Even in a world filled with cell phones, the old system still has its place. There's no language barrier, no location confusion and no delay. Pull the hook and help can be there within four minutes. Boston's system, consisting of about 1,200 fire alarm boxes, is the oldest fire alarm system in the country. In fact, the technology, if you could call it that, is the same as when these boxes first went up in 1852. It is essentially a telegraph using morse code.  

Following concerns about the rise of e-bike and e-scooter fires in the US, firefighters hosted a national event to raise awareness about the potential risks posed by lithium-ion batteries. Hosted by the Fire Department of New York in mid-September, the symposium was attended by 300 people from across North America, including the National Bicycle Dealers Association president Heather Mason. According to the NBDA, e-mobility products are the third biggest cause of fires in New York. Earlier this year the NBDA and consultancy Human Powered Solutions (HPS) launched a campaign to educate retailers and the industry at large about the growing safety problem that has been created by the surge in consumer purchases of electric bicycles and scooters that utilise lithium-ion batteries.  

September 24 marks a dark day for Sacramento. It was 50 years ago that 22 people died — 12 of them children — when a jet taking off from Sacramento Executive Airport overran the runway and slammed into Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour. Witness accounts indicate about 100 people were inside the popular eatery when the inexperienced pilot who had participated in the Golden West Sport Aviation Show changed their lives forever. Twenty-five people were injured, many with serious burns. Margie Smith, who lived nearby with her husband and three young children remembers that Sunday like it was yesterday. "Our neighbor's daughter told us about the crash. But that's all we knew," she recalled. "It wasn't until the next morning that we learned how close to home it hit."