CORONA, CA - Aircraft and ground crews battled an 800-acre wildfire Thursday as it spread over dry, brown hills in western Riverside County. Flames burned near homes protected by cleared ground. Firefighters had the blaze 10 percent contained by late afternoon. Even though there were no immediate threats to structures, the county Fire Department urged residents to be prepared to leave ...

SAN JOSE - The San Jose Fire Department is set to close the Communications Hill Fire Station on Aug. 1 and make Station 30 on Auzerais Avenue a "posting station," fire leaders said. The moves are part of a new program to spread firefighters more efficiently throughout the city. Because of city budget cuts and stalled union negotiations, the department is ...

CHICAGO - Chicago Fire Department veteran Robert Hoff will be the city's new fire commissioner after alderman unanimously approved his appointment today. Hoff, the department's first deputy commissioner since 2008, has been with the department for 33 years. He is a third generation firefighter. Hoff has twice been awarded the department's highest honor for bravery. In 1992, he was given the ...

BRISTOL - "We'll add that to the list." That was pretty much the phrase for the day among emergency personnel throughout the region Tuesday as they struggled to run from one water emergency to another. "Three feet of water in the basement," a Norton dispatcher announced over the police scanner. "Need more pumps here," an Attleboro firefighter reported to headquarters. "We'll ...

FREEMONT, WA - The pain, sorrow and sense of loss triggered by Saturday's Fremont apartment fire is shared not just by those who knew the five victims but by the firefighters unable to save them. Firefighters who have been "beating themselves up" over their inability to rescue the woman and four children in the burning apartment attended a Tuesday night session ...

BUFORD, GA — A Vietnam veteran in still incarcerated after an incident where he fired a handgun and assaulted an off-duty firefighter with a walking cane outside of his Buford home Thursday. The man, who police said is considered “50 percent mentally disabled” and possibly suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, reportedly fired his semi-automatic pistol in order to get the ...

JERSEY CITY, NJ - A four-alarm fire ripped through two Jersey City buildings yesterday afternoon, displacing eight families and injuring six firefighters, fire officials said. Called to a six-family building three and a half stories tall at 50 Belmont Ave. at 3:03 p.m., firefighters found that the adjacent two-family house at 48 Belmont Ave. was also engulfed in flames with heavy ...

PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY, VA - When Prince George's County firefighters first came on the scene of a gas-leak-turned-explosion at the Penn Mar Shopping Center in May, they had all the right policies and procedures on the books to tell them how to respond. Problem was, not enough of them knew those policies and procedures existed, according to a federal safety report ...

WHARTON, TX — A judge Friday agreed to temporarily bar the allegedly transgendered widow of a Wharton firefighter from spending or collecting his death benefits. State District Judge Randy Clapp ruled after hearing from Nikki Araguz that she received a check for $60,000 on Thursday, about a 10th of the total cash expected because of Thomas Araguz's July 4 death in ...

TULARE COUNTY - Two Tulare County firefighters were hurt today when a pickup truck hit them as they worked on a vehicle fire near Alpaugh. Authorities are looking for the driver and occupants of the pickup, which did not stop. Authorities suspect the pickup occupants set the fire and were fleeing. Firefighter Pat Hines was thrown 50 feet, breaking ribs and ...

OROVILLE, CA — A homeless man might have died in a recent suspicious fire at Lincoln Boulevard and Myers Street, if he hadn't been rescued by a firefighter who happened to glance down and saw a pair of boots barely peeking out of a high clump of brush. The man was asleep or possibly passed out in a makeshift camp sheltered ...

CHICAGO - The fireman trudged out of Kristi Cahill's smoke-blackened West Rogers Park bungalow Tuesday evening, cradling a small, limp cat. "Her eyes were bulging and her tongue was sticking out," recalled Cahill, 42, of her beloved cat, Roux. Then something remarkable happened: Firefighters slipped a pet-sized clear plastic mask over Roux's face, and condensation bloomed inside the mask. Roux was ...

NEW YORK - Three firefighters and a cop plunged into the roiling East River yesterday to rescue a suicidal man who jumped from an East Harlem pier as well as two men who tried desperately to save him, authorities said. The drama on Pier 107 began at about 12:15 p.m. when Richard Karin, 60, who had been drinking, leaped in, sources ...

COLORADO - State legislators are beginning to challenge one of the ironclad tenets of public pension policy: that states cannot legally reduce pension benefits for current and future retirees. Lawmakers in Colorado, Minnesota and South Dakota voted earlier this year to limit cost-of-living increases they previously had promised to thousands of current and future retirees, who courts historically have protected from ...

NORFOLK, UK - Heroic firefighters - commended for their efforts in saving a young woman from near certain death in a Norwich bedsit - have relived the dramatic rescue. Norfolk fire service's Green Watch were praised by a judge last week as rogue landlord Michael Billings' was jailed for ignoring safety laws at a block of bedsits he owned in Magdalen ...

SEATTLE - With the first floor of her home in flames, Helen Gebregiorgis rushed upstairs to alert her sister and five young children as the smoke alarm blared. Gebregiorgis grabbed her 5-year-old niece, Samarah Smith, and dashed downstairs, believing the others were behind her. They weren't. Driven back by the heat and flames, her sons Joseph Gebregiorgis, 13, and Yaseen Shamam, ...

FRANKLIN (AP) — Two people charged in connection with a raid on a meth lab were ordered held yesterday on $500,000 bonds while fire officials continued to investigate what caused an explosion at the outset of the raid. Jeremy Clough, 31, and Rebecca Fields, 33, were charged with two felony counts each of manufacturing methamphetamine at two labs that investigators say ...

DAYTONA BEACH -- The arrest of Daytona Beach firefighter Adam Silva angered and surprised many of his colleagues; but his release from the county jail incensed TV media. It was the way Silva left the jail that made tempers rise, Volusia County officials say. The 30-year-old firefighter, arrested twice in one week -- on charges of rape and attempted rape -- ...

DENVER - Denver firefighters helped a dog from a sixth-floor ledge of the Denver Dry Lofts building this morning. Phil Champagne, spokesman for the Denver Fire Department, said the person who owned the dog tried several times to get the dog off the ledge without success. However firefighters, who worked their way along the ledge, were able to grab the dog ...

DETROIT — Four Detroit firefighters who were injured when a burning building collapsed remained hospitalized as the ATF joined an investigation into the suspicious blaze. Two of the firefighters remained in critical condition Saturday, The Detroit News reported. A fifth firefighter was treated and released from a hospital after Friday's fire. The firefighters suffered injuries ranging from a strained back to ...