The Kenai City Council agreed upon an outline of an automatic aid agreement between the City of Kenai Fire Department, the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Central Emergency Service Area, and Nikiski Fire Service Area. City Manager Paul Ostrander offered details, "This is an updated auto aid agreement between the Kenai Fire Department and CES and Nikiski. This redefines some of the boundaries that auto aid applies to. Essentially our auto aid area expands all the way from the intersection of K-Beach road and the Sterling Highway out in the Kasilof area on K-Beach all the way to East and West Poppy Lane on that side. Then, when you talk about on this side of the river, our response goes all the way to Soldotna to Spruce, which is the first intersection this side of Knight Drive and then we actually respond all the way to all of Nikiski's fire service area. Those boundaries have changed a little bit.  

VIDEO: The Alameda County Fire Department was battling a warehouse fire overnight Monday in San Leandro. By 1:25 a.m., about 50 firefighters were on the scene to fight the large blaze at a Georgia Pacific packaging plant on Alvarado Street. When KRON4 arrived on scene, crews were putting out hot spots and it was finally put out around 5 a.m. Georgia Pacific's corporate team says the fire happened in an outdoor storage area where its finished goods were held. "We appreciate the rapid response by the Alameda County Fire Department and other first responders to address the fire at our box plant in San Leandro," the corporate statement said. "The fire is now out. Thankfully there were no injuries. The facility expects to start back up this morning as scheduled."  

Sixty-two firefighters died in 2019 from injuries sustained while on duty, 22 less than the 2018 total of 84 firefighters, according to a new report from the U.S. Fire Administration. The 2019 total includes 10 firefighters who died under circumstances that were part of inclusion criteria changes resulting from the Hometown Heroes Survivors Benefit Act. When not including these fatalities for the purposes of a trend analysis, there were 52 non-Hometown Hero firefighter fatalities in 2019, for the lowest annual total since the USFA began this study. Firefighter fatalities included 25 career firefighters, 34 volunteer firefighters, and three part-time or full-time members of wildland or wildland contract fire agencies. The gender of the firefighters who died while on duty in 2019 consisted of one female and 61 males. There were no multiple firefighter fatality incidents in 2019; therefore, the 62 deaths in 2019 resulted from a total of 62 fatal incidents.  

Bob Perkins of the Winthrop Fire Department says his wife grows nervous when he and his firefighter sons Connor, 22, and Cody, 19, get called to fires or other emergencies. "By now, she's sorta used to it, but she still gets pretty nervous sometimes," he said, "and she ends up listening to the pager." The Perkins family is one of four with members of two generations serving on the department. They make up about one-third of the department's 33 staff members, which helps the department with crucial volunteer numbers, according to Fire Chief Dan Brooks. "It's a never-ending shell game to get people to join, and keep their interest," Brooks said. "There's always somebody coming on and somebody leaving. We do better than most." The department's four families with multiple generations serving Winthrop: Roger Audette and son, Alex, 18; Mark Arsenault and son, Tyler, 28; Bob Perkins and his two sons; and Billy Cummins and son, Nathan Cummins, 21, and stepson, Andrew Bellegarde, 35.  

In an unprecedented weekend of COVID-19 infections, nearly all of the US is seeing cases rise as the national total teeters near 10 million. There were 105,927 new coronavirus cases reported on Sunday, marking the 5th day in a row that cases topped 100,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. With 42 states reporting at least 10% more new COVID-19 cases this past week, according to JHU, an emergency physician at Brown University warns that the United States is "heading into the very worst of this pandemic." "We're about to see all of these little epidemics across the country, crossed and mixed, and it's going to be an awful lot like pouring gasoline on a fire," Dr. Megan Ranney told CNN's Fredricka Whitfield Sunday. Cases are currently raging at levels not seen at any other time in the pandemic. Sunday's unprecedented number followed the other top four highest new coronavirus case days, with the record that was set on Saturday with 128,412.  

Did you know that for over a century the fire trucks in Opelousas had names? That used to be a custom in this town as well as many other towns and cities across the U.S. Let's talk about that. Several days ago I received a message from Debbie Harmon Payne asking if I would know who the Opelousas fire truck "Sid" was named for. It seems John Saucier had contacted her with this question. I was able to let them know that particular truck for named for Sidney Brown, who had been the Fire Chief in Opelousas during the 1930s. Toward the end of that decade, the Sid Brown family relocated to Jeanerette and eventually to Baton Rouge. When the truck was named for Chief Brown in 1957, he was deceased, and his wife came to Opelousas from Baton Rouge for the ceremony. Reviewing this information made me think about other fire trucks in Opelousas that were named for local folks. It seems that custom was started in our town just after the Hope, Hook and Ladder Volunteer Fire Company No. 1 was created during the 1870s.