NEW YORK - A surfer was clinging to life Friday night after firefighters pulled him from the choppy waters of the Rockaways. The 20-year-old victim got tangled in a jetty off the boardwalk near Beach 92nd St. about 4:15p.m., officials and witnesses said. Fellow surfers swam to help the distressed man, whose ankle tether - a line that ties the board ...

WILMINGTON, Del. — Hundreds of Amtrak passengers in the Northeast were delayed for hours late Monday evening, following the fatality of a fire department official that halted at least six trains between New York and Washington into the early-morning hours. The Delaware State Police identified the victim on Tuesday as Brian P. Waynant Sr., a decorated inspector with the Wilmington Fire ...

PHILADELPHIA - A 12-year-old autistic child who died in a West Philadelphia rowhouse fire Saturday night might still be alive if not for a recent city policy of temporarily shutting firehouses to save money, the head of the firefighters union and community members said Sunday. "This is just a Russian roulette game, and now a kid is dead," said Bill Gault, ...

BROOKLYN, NY - Criminal charges against one firefighter involved in a boozy Brooklyn bar brawl were dropped Thursday, but a second has been indicted on two misdemeanors. Firefighter Ryan Warnock was charged with assault and disorderly conduct in connection with the Jan. 29 slugfest at the Salty Dog in Bay Ridge. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes refused to charge firefighter Michael ...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Authorities say a small plane has crashed in a busy business district near downtown Anchorage, Alaska, killing a small child and injuring the four other people onboard. Jennifer Rodi, an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, says the single-engine Cessna 206 went down shortly after 5 p.m. Tuesday after departing Merrill Field about a mile away. The ...

NEW KENSINGTON, PA - City firefighter John Shirey was searching for a fire Saturday night but instead, it found him. When he finally felt the fire that he and the other two members of his hose team, brothers Vince and Garrett Sekanick, were looking for inside 425 Ridge Ave., he didn't care about seeing it. "I was on the nozzle and ...

SHOREWOOD — Municipal leaders throughout Milwaukee County voiced fears Monday that they would soon be saddled with paying the full cost of paramedic services, either through restructuring county government or through county budget cuts. County Executive Scott Walker later sought to put those fears to rest, vowing to oppose any move that would leave cities and villages without paramedic funding. "You'd ...

BOSTON - The owner of a vacant Roxbury warehouse that burned to rubble in a nine-alarm inferno Saturday night said yesterday that he walked away from his business three years ago because concrete chunks from the towerlike building next door kept raining down on his property and Boston authorities were unable for the past decade to get its owners to fix ...

READING, PA - Nine firefighters and four residents were injured Sunday morning in a fire in an apartment house in Reading, fire officials said. The fire started about 10 a.m. on the second floor of the building at 245 S. 10th St. and quickly spread to the second floor of the adjoining apartment building at 243 S. 10th, Deputy Fire Chief ...

ROCKVILLE, Md. - Montgomery County Executive Ike Leggett has agreed to cut firefighter physical fitness costs from the budget in order to give some emergency workers a pay raise. [widget:news__wtop] Leggett and the Montgomery County firefighters' union recently formed an agreement to drop random drug and alcohol testing and eliminate the department's physiologist position for two years to fund special pay ...

PIERCE COUNTY, WI - A software glitch is the likely culprit behind a malfunction onboard a Red Wing ambulance that led to a woman’s death in April, according to ongoing investigations. Janice Hall, Red Wing, died April 22 while being transported to Minneapolis when the ambulance’s onboard oxygen system unexpectedly quit. The malfunction led to her death, according to a Dakota ...

HOUSTON, TX - Terry Garrison, a tall man with an almost constant grin, is an experienced and well-educated administrator whose management style draws on openness and inclusiveness, say fire and police officials who have worked with him. On Wednesday, Mayor Annise Parker presented Garrison, 52, who until Monday was interim chief of the obscure Daisy Mountain Fire District outside of Phoenix, ...

While investigators continue to search for the cause of a fire that heavily damaged a Harborcreek Township biofuels plant over the weekend, firefighters who answered the call say they want to know what hazards they came in contact with while dousing the flames. Fairfield Hose Co. Fire Chief Jim Hawryliw said he will meet with other fire chiefs, county and local ...

BOSTON - One man died and another man survived after jumping from the Massachusetts Avenue Bridge into the Charles River Tuesday night, State Police said. The men jumped around 11 p.m. from the bridge, which connects Boston and Cambridge, Sergeant Matthew Murray, a State Police spokesman, said. State Police troopers assigned to the Suffolk district attorney's office are investigating, Murray said. ...

DENVER - Carburetor trouble in a 1988 Maserati set off a fire and an ammunition explosion in the garage of a Denver home Sunday morning, according to the Denver Fire Department. Venita Wood, 72, started the Maserati in the garage and walked about 20 feet back into her house when she heard an explosion. "I came out, and there was fire ...

Yuma, Ariz. -- After determining the 751 acre Laguna fire to be human caused, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is offering a $10,000 reward to the public for information that leads to a conviction. "Right now, it's under investigation to determine who started it and whether it was accidental or intentional," BLM information officer Pamela Mathis said Monday. "But regardless ...

Chris Lytle is one of a few Ultimate Fighting Championship veterans who still keeps his day job. Technically, it's a day/night job. He's a firefighter in Indianapolis. Between his job, a busy fight schedule in UFC and his four kids, he has little time for anything else. He admits he doesn't have other hobbies and says his many fight-night bonuses have ...

CAMDEN, NJ - When Camden announced last week that it could lay off nearly half of its police officers and a third of its firefighters next month, the news was surprising only in its scope. After years of cutting in other areas of government and trimming police and fire departments through attrition, cities throughout New Jersey recently have announced a striking ...