Firefighters are gaining control of the Race Pond Fire that has threatened for days to jump into the Okefenokee Swamp, officials said. At last measure, the fire had burned 7,852 acres, counting burnouts, and was 40 percent contained, said Mark Wiles, a Georgia Forestry Commission senior forester working with a joint information team. "We thinking the burnout we attempted over the ...

DETROIT - The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and the SAE International will be co-sponsoring the U.S. National Electric Vehicles Safety Standards Summit on October 19-20, 2010, at the Cobo Convention Center in Detroit, Michigan. The purpose of the U.S. National Electric Vehicles Safety Standards Summit is to support the rapid implementation of electrical and hybrid-electric vehicles in the United States, ...

GROVE CITY -- The Wendell August Forge, an American institution that has furnished generations of families with its hand-cast decorative ornaments and plates, burned to the ground Saturday afternoon. About 25 employees and 15 tourists and shoppers were in the building when the fire started. They all escaped unharmed. The fire started around 2 p.m. in a workshop where an employee ...

SAN FRANCISCO - A former South San Francisco firefighter has been charged with running a high-stakes sports betting ring, using city phones to wager an average of $500 a week and soliciting colleagues to participate, authorities said. James Anthony Selvitella Jr., 52, a onetime battalion chief, was charged with conspiracy and bookmaking in San Mateo County Superior Court along with four ...

STOLLINGS, W.Va. — The second fire in a year will delay the reopening of a southern West Virginia coal processing plant, owner Massey Energy Co. said Wednesday. The fire that damaged the new Zigmond Processing plant Tuesday and one that destroyed its predecessor Aug. 27 started with cutting and welding on steel pipe, Mine Safety and Health Administration spokeswoman Amy Louviere ...

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City firefighter suspected in a fatal hit-and-run has been placed on administrative duty while authorities investigate the incident. Investigators were trying to determine if the firefighter was behind the wheel of the car when it struck and killed a pedestrian in Brooklyn on Sunday. They said Patrick Quagliariello walked into a Brooklyn precinct hours ...

ALPINE, Texas — A patient and his wife were among the dead when an air ambulance crashed shortly after takeoff from a West Texas airport, killing all 5 people on board. The crash happened about 12:15 a.m. Sunday about a mile east of Alpine-Casparis Municipal Airport, around 200 miles southeast of El Paso. The twin-engine Cessna 421 had just taken off ...

SEATTLE - A window washer was rescued by Seattle firefighters Thursday after he fell off his seat and dangled from his safety harness about 65 feet above the ground outside McCaw Hall at Seattle Center. The man was not injured, but "he's being checked out by a medic unit as we speak," Kyle Moore, spokesman for the Seattle Fire Department, said ...

BOCA RATON, FL — They brought out pulleys, hoists, straps and boards. The group of Boca Raton firefighters pretended to rescue injured workers stuck in underground pipes. "You're going to take the guy and strap him on here," said private instructor Kevin Mullen as he demonstrated on a plastic board. Tuesday was the second day of training for 17 Boca Raton ...

The U.S. Fire Administration has announced the theme of Arson Awareness Week 2010: Community Arson Prevention. USFA and its partners are conducting education and awareness efforts based on that theme today through Saturday. The goal is to give communities tools and strategies to combat arson in their neighborhoods, businesses, schools, and places of worship. USFA's partners are the International Association of ...

ELGIN, IL - Two Elgin firefighters and a police officer were taken to area hospitals Monday night after each became ill at the scene of a hazardous materials call at an apartment building. Emergency crews were called to investigate the hazmat call at a six-flat apartment building on the 1100 block of Birch Drive at about 5:20 p.m., officials said. The ...

INDIANA STATE UNIVERSITY - Firefighters already accustomed to the oppressive heat of real fires filed down the stairs of a five-story training structure in northern Terre Haute. The smoke - albeit fake - was so thick it shrouded the room in almost total darkness. Dave Dziedzicki, a graduate assistant in Indiana State University's athletic training department, waited at the bottom. Wearing ...

WASHINGTON - A D.C. fire engine crashed into a Metro bus in Northwest D.C. Wednesday, injuring 22 people - including four firefighters. The fire truck was on its way to help a pedestrian who had been hit by a car on 13th Street and Madison Street, when it struck the Metro bus on 14th Street just after 10:15 a.m. Eighteen people ...

MONROEVILLE, PA - Monroeville was just beginning to grow into a bustling suburb and commercial district in July 1949 when Raymond J. Genley led a meeting to start a new fire department there. The new William Penn Highway was about to be lined with the Miracle Mile and other shopping centers. Mr. Genley and 17 neighbors from the Mellon Plan neighborhood ...

SALEM - As Dennis Covey watched news coverage of the earthquake in Haiti, the 51-year-old retired Salem firefighter wanted to help in any way he could. "I just said, 'We've got to go,'" he said yesterday. Covey, a lieutenant with the Fire Department who now lives in Palm Bay, Fla., said he could not make a big financial contribution. But he ...

HAMILTON — Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones opened a wing of the recently closed Resolutions Jail facility to house 19 residents of a Hamilton group home displaced by a fire Monday morning, Aug. 2. An exterior light may have caused the fire in which a firefighter was injured. Smoke and flames could be seen coming out the top of the ...

Predictions of an early and vicious fire season are coming true, especially in a swath of the Southwest where extreme drought and a killing freeze this winter combined to desiccate grass and shrubs. Fire restrictions are in place on most state and federal lands throughout Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. Dangerous fires break out daily. Southeastern Arizona, including the Tucson area, ...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A fire marshal is expected to testify in the trial of a man charged in the killings of a woman and her two daughters in a Connecticut home invasion three years ago. Testimony is to continue Friday in New Haven Superior Court in the case of Steven Hayes, one of two men charged with capital felony, murder, ...