VIDEO: After eight months without a fire chief, the City of Sweetwater has welcomed Chief Dewey Coy. He was selected from a group of just four, by an outside consultant group hired by the City. Sweetwater's Fire Chief retires after 23 years of service "I grew up in Snyder until I was 13, and then moved to Zephyr which is where I graduated high school from," Chief Coy said. "So this is somewhat of a coming home for me." This is Chief Coy's first time as a fire chief, but his firefighting career began at 18. He volunteered in Zephyr and Crane, Texas before moving to Arkansas. Chief Coy joined the Cabot Arkansas department and ultimately landed in Jacksonville, Arkansas where he retired as their Battalion Chief. "About 6 months, I realized I wasn't ready for retirement," explained Chief Coy.  

Gov. Greg Abbott this week announced the reappointment of an Edinburg native to the board that oversees a retirement fund for volunteer firefighters and emergency personnel in Texas. Abbott appointed Pilar Rodriguez to the Texas Emergency Services Retirement System Board of Trustees. Rodriguez currently serves as the Executive Director of the Hidalgo County Regional Mobility Authority, as well as the Fire Chief for the Pharr Fire Department. Rodriguez is also a member of the Linn San Manuel Volunteer Fire Department, Texas Public Works Association, the State of Texas Firefighters, and the Fire Marshal Association of Texas. Rodriguez was first appointed to the Texas Emergency Services Retirement System Board of Trustees in 2016.  

A second alarm fire ignited in a room at an Abilene hotel Sunday morning, causing thousands in damages for the business. According to a press release from the Abilene Fire Department (AFD), crews responded to the structure fire at the Super 8 in the 1500 block of East Stamford Street around 9:30 Sunday morning. Crews said they arrived to heavy smoke emerging from the doorway of a second-floor room. With help from additional crews, AFD was able to contain the fire to the one room. Meanwhile, other hotel guests in the surrounding rooms had to be evacuated. AFD said no occupants were inside the room at the time of the fire, and all were evacuated without injury. The value of damages were estimated at $10,000. The fire is under investigation.  

Nueces County first responders and the Corpus Christi Fire Department worked with the Texas National Guard's 6th Civil Support Team to conduct hazardous materials and law enforcement response exercises this week. On Thursday, first responders met at the Hilltop Community Center for a hazardous materials exercise requiring the team to set up an isolation perimeter, a decontamination area and more. "This is a terrorist training event from a standpoint of a hazmat discovery to finding out this is a terrorist act," Nueces County Emergency Management Coordinator Louie Ray said. The first entry team, which evaluates the hazard before others enter the scene, prepared to enter a simulated scenario where a homeless individual was found inside the community center with redness around his neck and difficulty breathing.  

The Laredo Fire Department was called out to rescue several people stranded in flooded streets on Sunday night and Monday morning. According to a spokesperson from the fire department, the rescues happened on the following streets: Sara Road, I-35 north bound by the railroad overpass between mile marker 7 and 8 and Isabel and Jefferson Avenue. The City of Laredo also received additional help from the State of Texas as well as help from other cities. Laredo Fire Department Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator Guillermo Heard confirmed that firefighters from the City of Killeen had offered to help with the rescues. The Texas Division of Emergency Management, or TDEM, has also sent additional assistance. The organizations task force has brought down four boats to help in flooded areas.  

VIDEO: Eric Gonzalez is an El Paso firefighter for station 12 and also serves as a volunteer firefighter in Socorro. During a shift in Socorro, he and his fellow firefighters were called out to rescue a canine stuck in a canal. "She was in a canal and she was in about two feet of water and you could tell she was very tired and lethargic," said Gonzalez. Gonzalez and his team contacted animal services to see if they could take in the rescued dog which the firefighters named, Hope. "They did advised us that they would take her in but they could not provide us with information on what could happen with her because I kept asking, can you make sure she's ok and they said 'we cant get that definite answer to you," said Gonzalez. It was then that he decided he would take Hope home.  

Winston-Salem firefighters battled an inferno at a house on Sunday morning. Video shows crews attempting to put out the blaze that engulfed the house on Patterson Avenue completely in flames at 3:15 a.m. A person with The Habitat Homeless Veterans Transition Project, LLC tells FOX8 that the house was one of their homes. Aftermath video shot by FOX8's Brandon Talton shows the smoldering remains of the house. The Habitat Homeless Veterans Transition Project representative says that they were refurbishing the house that had been vacant for around 10 years in order to use it as a shelter for six 18-year-olds who will be timing out of foster care. The roof of the house had just been replaced and the wiring was halfway from being completely re-done, according to The Habitat Homeless Veterans Transition Project representative.  

VIDEO: It's been 35 years since the tragic crash of Northwest Flight 255. The plane crashed shortly after takeoff from Detroit Metro Airport back on Aug. 16, 1987, killing 156 people -- with just one person surviving, a four-year-old girl. Hank Winchester talked with Captain John Thiede of the Romulus Fire Department, the firefighter who pulled that child from the wreckage that night. "I was just checking this, it was weird. When I look back at it, I can picture how the scene was," Thiede said. "Once we found her, we had that little piece of joy that we found a survivor, because we didn't think we'd find anybody." Cecilia Cichan was the four-year-old girl who suffered serious injuries, but survived the crash. The family she was traveling with did not survive. The family was from Arizona.  

Palm Bay High School's new firefighting academy is serious business — and not just because, as instructor Chester Bombriant quipped, "everything in that classroom could hurt you." It's also a college-level course, and it's the first of its kind in Brevard County. About 100 students are in the program. On Friday, some of them saw their new classroom for the first time along with school administrators, local firefighters and reporters. The program will give students a head start at a well-paying career, and could help address a local shortage of firefighters, officials said. The course is designed to prepare students for the fire fighting program at Eastern Florida State, and eventually their state certifications. "They're going to be doing for the first two or three years here before they get over there," Bombriant said.  

VIDEO: Sitting in the heart of downtown Anderson is a new memorial dedicated to the firefighters who were killed in the line of duty. "This monument stands as a symbol of strength, courage, dedication, brotherhood and sacrifice," Anderson Fire Chief Charlie King said. "I'm sure that no one on this memorial would have ever known they were answering their last call," Dr. Jimmy Smith, the Chief of the Honea Path Fire Department added. The project was a collaboration between the city, county and artist Scott Foster. "We believe it not only stands as a formidable memorial but also as an asset to the community," Foster said. The structure is 14 feet tall and has a bell at the top. Each side features different scenes of firefighters in action.  

During Overdose Awareness Month, Knoxville Fire Department is working to shed light on the frequency of overdoses in Knox County. From Aug. 1-12, KFD responded to a total of 101 reported overdoses, according to their Twitter posts. Assistant Chief Mark Wilbanks confirmed that since the beginning of 2022, the station's total overdose response number was 1301, as of Aug. 12 at 5 p.m. In August alone, the District Attorney General's Office reports that Knox County has seen 11 deaths from suspected overdoses, as of Aug. 11, with the highest amount of suspected overdose deaths being three, on Aug. 3. This year, the Knox County Attorney General's office reports 291 suspected overdose deaths as of Aug. 11. Last year, 498 suspected overdose deaths were reported by the Knox County Attorney General's Office.