Four people were killed in a house fire Wednesday near New Braunfels. According to a news release from the county fire marshal's office, the victims include an 8-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl, an 18-year-old woman and a 44-year-old man. Another person who lived at the residence escaped the fire, officials said. A sixth person who lives in the home wasn't there at the time of the fire. When fire crews arrived at the home in the 300 Block of Leisure Village near New Braunfels, they found the residence fully engulfed in flames and the four victims trapped inside the residence. The Guadalupe County Sheriff's Office, along with four fire and EMS departments, responded to the fire. The names of the victims haven't been released. The cause of the fire is still under investigation, however it doesn't appear to be suspicious at this time, officials said.  

Firefighters had all of the right equipment to put out flames when their engine caught fire early Thursday morning. According to an official with the Bexar County Emergency Services District, Engine 164 was heading back to the station around 2 a.m. Thursday when its engine caught fire. The crew inside began smelling smoke and pulled over near the intersection of Gen Mont and Glen Haven. When they got out of the truck, the crew said that fire started coming out from the wheel wall. The firefighters worked quickly to put out the flames by stretching a line from their truck and putting out the fire engine. The engine was disabled and had to be towed back to the station. According to an official with Bexar Co. ESD a malfunction occurred in the drivetrain causing a fire in the back wheels of the truck. The damages are estimated to be around $10,000. No injuries were reported.  

Just in time for the new year, the League City Volunteer Fire Department has received their new all-hazards response boat. The watercraft is outfitted with a 1,000-gallon-per-minute pump for firefighting and side-scan sonar for search-and-recovery efforts. In addition, it will be able to respond to events that produce radiation threats, making it the only boat between Houston and Galveston with such broad capabilities. League City has several volunteer firefighters who are boat captains and can operate the craft. At 30 feet in length and a beam of 10½ feet, the boat can carry a fairly large crew and will be berthed at the South Shore Harbour Marina. The boat will be used starting in the spring time as boat season kicks off in our area. The boat was obtained after the Fire Department applied for a grant through the Port Security Grant program.  

Today the City Council voted to buy the former A to Z tire building that will become a maintenance facility for city fire trucks. The future maintenance building is located at Southwest 3rd Avenue and Adams street. "The building can hold seven to eight trucks during maintenance," said Amarillo Fire Department Chief Jason Mays. He said at a price of $600, 000, the building will cost a third of what the new construction would be. The building will eventually also house offices and classrooms. The buy of the building will be funded by bond money that is approved by voters in 2016.  

Cleburne Fire Chief provided an update on the department's vaccination efforts at the Jan. 12 City Council meeting. Fire Chief Scott Lail explaied how the department became a vaccine distributor, how it administered 500 doses of COVID-19 vaccine, and how it setup a new system to register vaccine appointments if it receives additional doses. Currently, Cleburne Fire Department has been allocated the second doses to go with initial 500 it administered. The State has not indicated if Cleburne Fire will receive any new first doses beyond that 500. Chief Lail said they could not request additional vaccines, the State is responsible for allocating all vaccines throughout Texas. "We do anticipate that somewhere in the near future vaccines will become more readily available," Chief Lail said. "But there's no timeframe for when we can expect them to be more available to where anyone that wants one can get one."  

VIDEO: A large fire broke out at an apartment complex near the Industrial Canal in New Orleans East Wednesday night. The cause of the fire is not yet known, but it appears to have broken out at or near the Gentilly Ridge apartment complex off of Chef Menteur Highway. NOFD officials say the complex has about 100 units in it, about 90 of them occupied. The building does have firewalls, but officials said the flames spread through the attic, bypassing many of them. No injuries were reported Wednesday night, but firefighters are still processing the scene to make sure all of the residents made it out safely. A traffic camera on I-10 near Old Gentilly Road appears to show a plume of dark smoke rising from a fire near the Industrial Canal.  

The Thornton Fire Department is one of the first in the country to use new technology to monitor firefighters who were exposed to COVID-19. The department is using the Masimo Pulse Oximeter on quarantined firefighters to check their health status and be notified of a health decline. The device measures oxygen saturation, pulse and breathing rate, circulation and respiratory quality. "Each call, incident, and encounter continued to place firefighters at risk," said Thornton Fire Community Safety & Information Officer Sabrina Iacovetta. "Precautions were taken to protect firefighters with equipment, policy and guidelines, and despite all efforts, individuals were affected." Alerts for abnormal readings are available 24/7, the department says.  

Electric vehicle fires pose safety risks to first responders and guidelines from manufacturers about how to deal with them have been inadequate, according to U.S. investigators. There are also gaps in industry safety standards and research on high-voltage lithium-ion battery fires, especially in high-speed, severe crashes, the National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday. The agency, which has no enforcement powers and can only make recommendations, called for manufacturers to write vehicle-specific response guides for fighting battery fires and limiting chemical thermal runaway and reignition. The guidelines also should include information on how to safely store vehicles with damaged lithium-ion batteries. The recommendations come at a time when automakers are rolling out multiple new electric vehicle models, with many in the industry perceiving an inflection point in switching from gasoline power to cleaner electricity.  

To the known risk factors for developing severe COVID-19—age, male sex, or any of a series of underlying conditions—a new study adds one more: high levels of the virus in your saliva. Standard COVID-19 tests sample the nasal passage. But several new tests look for SARS-CoV-2, the pandemic coronavirus, in saliva, and the new work finds a striking correlation between high virus levels there and later hospitalization or death. If the results are confirmed, saliva tests could help doctors prioritize which patients in the early stages of the disease should receive medicines that drive down levels of the virus. "I thought it was pretty striking," says Shane Crotty, a virologist at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology, who was not involved with the research. Crotty notes the results suggest virus levels in saliva reflect viral load deep in the lungs, where the disease does much of its damage in severe cases. "That is a fundamentally valuable insight," Crotty says.  

Broadview Heights Fire Chief Jeffrey Hajek is giving 19 News a first-hand look at a new piece of technology his department uses to save precious seconds when getting to an emergency. It's called the HAAS Safety Cloud System. The device alerts drivers to move over because emergency vehicles are coming through. Hajek knows has seen the frustrating problem himself of cars not getting out of the way. "We've had accidents & they've actually gone higher because people are more distracted with technology," he said. So how does it work? The small device sends notifications to any GPS Navigation software like Waze or Apple Maps. "Saying these vehicles are here & they are coming towards you or have stopped on the side of the road, so it's real-time, so it's great for drivers," Hajek said. The alerts can not only save the life of a person in dire need of help… but it can save an EMT or firefighter from getting into a tragic accident while racing to the scene of an emergency.