There's a chicken and egg debate brewing over Thursday's Austin City Council meeting. It's a decision over whether to go forward with an automatic aid agreement between Austin Fire, Travis County EDSs and Williamson County agencies. The deal would send the closest firefighters to cover any emergency, regardless of city limits, which would speed up the response times. The question right now is whether coordinated dispatch and operating systems should come first. "If I'm having a heart attack, I don't care what patch is on that sleeve," said Austin's Fire Chief Joel Baker. Its been a back-and-forth battle between Austin's fire leaders and its labor union. "There are many reasons to make sure we get it at the front end," said Austin Fire Association President Bob Nicks.  

Officials say elevated levels for 1, 3-Butadiene have been detected after the TPC fires, and have issued a voluntary evacuation for Port Neches residents. A temporary shelter for those needing a place to stay has been set up at Ford Park Arena, 5115 Interstate 10 S, Beaumont. Wind is expected to shift direction overnight, and high humidity should keep the vapors close to the ground according to Jefferson County Emergency Management officials. A Facebook post from officials says current levels being measured do not pose a serious health risk but may cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, irritated eyes and throat. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms you are encouraged to leave your location. The post says any of these symptoms experienced are reversible and will not have long term effects.  

Gina Perez is up before the sun every morning to make the hour-long commute from Los Fresnos to Hidalgo County for South Texas College's Fire Science Program. Once she gets to class she puts on her heavy ‘bunker gear' and gets to work learning the art of fire safety and extinguishing danger. Firefighting is an industry that women are still trying to break into with more frequency. It's still rare to see a woman wearing full gear, holding the hose as the designated nozzle person and running into a flaming structure. The Basic Firefighter certificate she is pursuing is a semester-long program designed to prepare students for the profession according to standards from the Texas Commission on Fire Protection. It's noticeable that Perez is the only woman taking the course this time around. She said that took some getting used to.  

A small group of firefighters gathered Sunday to give thanks. Staked out around them was the beginnings of a new fire substation for the Inter-Community Volunteer Fire Department. It's been a long-time coming, Assistant Fire Chief Jason Barnett said, and he noted during Sunday's dedication ceremony the help they got along the way. "God's given us this land through the help of the community, through the help of each one of us as taxpayers and the other taxpayers in the community," Barnett told his fellow firefighters, after quoting 1 Peter 4:7. "We need to be sure that we use this land to glorify that with the talents God has given us — and that's to be able to serve this community." The new substation will be located at 247 FM 31 South near Jeter's Junction and the intersection of FM 123 and FM 31 in Panola County.  

It's a reunion nine months in the making, but for everyone involved it was well worth the wait. "It was good to see everyone," said Lindley Mock, the new mom. "(I was) remembering, ‘Oh! You did this. You were there for this part.'" You see, almost nine months is also how long it took before little Khloe Mock was finally born, and it just so happened to be with the help of some firefighters and first responders. "I've been in the fire and EMS for 26 years and this is my first delivery in the field," said Robert Sebastia, a Montgomery County firefighter. "We were blessed that they were close enough that we didn't have to do it without them," Lindley Mock said. The 28-year-old mom was on her way to the hospital last March, but before pulling out of her driveway she went into labor and called 911.  

Dave Rowell's shirt says it all: "Euclid Fire: Nobody Fights Alone." When I meet Rowell, a captain in the Euclid Fire Department, we pull beat-up chairs across from each other in the duty office of Station 1, a functional-looking brick building on a strip of East 222nd Street. Outside the office, the bay doors are open. A Dalmatian sits out front of the station, plopped adorably between two red garage doors. Look quickly, and you'd miss that it's a statue. Out back, firefighters wipe down one of their fire engines, which gleams red and chrome in the morning sun. As Rowell and I talk, they whirl up the siren and flash the lights. Some firefighters are all too happy to regale you with stories of their daring. Rowell is not one of those. He tends toward the reserved, valiant sort, the kind of guy who is almost allergic to talking about himself.  

VIDEO: Crews worked to clean up an oil spill Wednesday morning in Elliott Bay near the Seattle Waterfront. At about 8 a.m., crews at Fire Station 5 found a small leak of waste oil from Fireboat Leschi, Seattle fire officials said. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, several gallons were spilled. Crews immediately secured the leak and several agencies responded. Blooms were placed around the sheen to contain and absorb the oil. The U.S. Coast Guard was at the scene leading the mitigation efforts, along with the Department of Ecology and Seattle Public Utilities. The Seattle Fire Department said it will investigate to determine how the leak occurred.  

The city's Department of Buildings will begin enforcing a commercial sprinkler law passed in 2004 requiring all New York City landlords to install the fire prevention equipment. Despite the 15-year window for property owners to get up to code, it was revealed at a November City Council committee hearing that about 1,100 buildings were still not in compliance with the Local Law 26 — and 86 building owners have completely ignored city notifications. The window officially closed Dec. 1, and all commercial building owners are required to have installed sprinkler systems in their buildings throughout the city, including numerous city owned structures. "Our goal is compliance," said Andrew Rudansky, a spokesman for the Department of Buildings. "Building owners who fail to comply with DOB orders regarding these sprinkler requirements may face additional violations, which carry additional associated civil penalties, until they come into compliance."  

On Oct. 23, firefighters from multiple Norwich departments were called to a massive house fire on Bentley Avenue, a scene of controlled chaos with mutual aid back-up staged just down the road from the blaze as city trucks sprayed the multi-family residence with streams of water. Norwich Fire Department Acting Chief Keith Wucik, as incident commander, had a lot of balls in the air that afternoon between directing the main firefighting effort to keeping track of how many members had arrived on scene from the city's volunteer departments. To make the situation even more challenging, the body of a resident was found in the smoldering home. In an effort to better coordinate resources at mutual aid fires and to ultimately ensure firefighter safety, Wucik recently began pushing to implement a city-wide identification system, an idea first floated by former Norwich Fire Chief Kenneth Scandariato years ago.  

Village trustees passed a resolution on Monday night urging the Racine County Communications Center to adopt a practice of dispatching the nearest available emergency medical unit, and requesting that all county communities west of Interstate 94 pass similar resolutions. The move to closest-unit dispatch would mean when an emergency call comes in, dispatchers would send the closest available first responders, regardless of municipal borders. That model could help alleviate the dangers created by the disputes among the three Waterford-area fire agencies. A Journal Times investigation published Sunday found that those disputes have repeatedly resulted in cases when citizens in need of medical care in Rochester and parts of the Town of Waterford have sometimes had to wait 20 minutes or more for care, despite the Waterford Fire Department having ambulances available to respond in mere minutes.