The Urbana Fire Department is acknowledging three of its firefighters for saving an elderly woman's life during a cardiac event, all while they were on a routine grocery run. Department officials posted on Facebook that Engine Company 252 was shopping at Meijer Monday morning when they were paged overhead by store employees to come to the front. A woman was experiencing cardiac arrest. The firefighters — Lieutenant Josh Ingold, Engineer Tara Stigers and Firefighter Zach Brooks — performed CPR while setting up an AED, which restored the woman's pulse to normal. They continued assisting the woman until an ambulance from Arrow could arrive. "Their teamwork and ability to adapt to the circumstances lead to the highest probable outcome for the patient," department officials said.  

A four-unit apartment complex in unincorporated Kendall County was deemed uninhabitable after a unit caught fire Wednesday, officials said. Just before 6 p.m. Wednesday, Ken-Com dispatch received a 911 call from someone reporting the sound of smoke detectors and smell of smoke inside an apartment complex in the 100 block of Harbor Drive. Upon arrival, Oswego Fire Protection District crews saw smoke coming from a second-floor unit, according to a news release. Firefighters forced their way into the unit to find a working fire in a back bedroom, extinguishing it quickly before overhauling the immediate area, officials said. Other crews searched the four apartment units to confirm the building had been evacuated. Officials estimate the fire caused about $150,000 in damages in the unit where the blaze began.  

VIDEOS/PHOTO: Gasoline spilled out from an unsecured hatch on the top of the gasoline delivery tanker that overturned and ignited beneath an Interstate 95 bridge in Philadelphia a year ago, according to new details from federal investigators. Video evidence obtained by investigators shows the cover to the 16-inch "manhole" was open when driver Nathan Moody arrived at a Wilmington, Delaware, terminal to refill the tank and it was still not properly secured when he drove away to deliver it to a convenience store in Philadelphia, about 42 miles (68 kilometers) away. The crash killed Moody and disrupted transportation along a vital interstate for weeks.  

VIDEO/PHOTOS: An inspiring story of innovation and technology — two of the E.M.I.L.Y. devices, a revolutionary life-saving drone, have been donated to both Silver Beach and New Buffalo. The new technology was unveiled Monday afternoon in St. Joseph. Beach staff from both St. Joe and New Buffalo, along with other emergency responders, are training with the new drone. The device was donated by a family determined to turn their tragedy into a lifesaving action. E.M.I.L.Y. stands for the Emergency Integrated Lifesaving Lanyard. The families of drowning victims Emily MacDonald and Kory Ernster donated the robot in their honor. Emily's mother said when she heard the name for the lifesaving device was the same as her daughter's, she felt it was a calling to help others.  

PHOTOS: While two triple-decker house fires left dozens displaced and two people dead, houses of this design do not make up the majority of the state's residential fires, the State Fire Marshal's office told MassLive. Triple-decker homes were originally built for factory workers and have been a common form of housing for over a century, GBH reported in 2022. Such homes make up the main source of affordable housing in Massachusetts cities that were previously major centers of industry, such as Worcester, Brockton and New Bedford. Part of what makes triple-decker homes a general risk during a fire is a balloon-frame construction that allows fires to spread very rapidly, unimpeded, from the basement to the attic and throughout void spaces, according to Jake Wark, public information officer for the Department of Fire Services.  

Evidence that Word Trade Center (WTC) responders during 9/11 and its aftermath have since suffered poorer brain health than others not exposed to WTC toxins has mounted in recent years. A new study led by Stony Brook University researchers that evaluates more than 5,000 WTC responders indicates that those who had more exposures to WTC-related toxins have dementia at a higher rate than other responders with fewer WTC-related toxic exposures. Published in JAMA Network Open, the study evaluated patients from the Stony Brook WTC Health and Wellness Program for signs of dementia. The study lasted more than eight years, from November 2014 to January 2023. The average age of the participants at the start of the study was only 53 years old.