Firefighters had quite the busy Friday morning in the Houston area as different departments battled church fires. SkyEye video shows Dickinson firefighters battling a fire at about 6:30 a.m. at Faith Lutheran Church on 800 FM-517. Most of the roof was completely gone, and because there was no wind, the smoke was shooting up. The Dickinson Fire Department asked for assistance from League City, Sante Fe, and San Leon Fire Departments. Earlier in the morning, Houston firefighters were called to the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in downtown, the department said. The department received the call at about 5:30 a.m. about a two-alarm fire. A two-alarm fire calls for more trucks, firefighters, and equipment like oxygen tanks. Sr. Capt. Eduardo Cruz with Ladder 7 said the fire seems to have started in the second floor toward the rear of the church in an electrical room.  

The Lufkin Fire Department Special Operations Unit rescued a person who was trapped in an excavated hole at a work site on Thursday evening. The incident happened around 6:10 p.m., but officials said "LFD quickly developed a rescue plan and began extrication efforts." The person was successfully removed around 7:10 p.m. and evaluated by Angelina County EMS. The Special Operations Unit, Central VFD, Redland VFD, the Angelina County Sheriff's Department, LFD Chief 2, Battalion 1 and Rescue 4 all responded to the scene. The general manager for the company at the work site was also consulted as a subject matter expert along with the City of Lufkin Superintendent of Water and Sewer. "Thank you to all entities involved, including the City of Lufkin Water and Sewer Department for bringing additional heavy equipment and trench shoring boxes to the scene for rapid deployment if it had been needed," the release stated.  

VIDEO: A Carrollton firefighter's widow got a chance to meet the department member who restored a bit of her late husband's legacy. Paramedic Lee Holbert was a registered nurse, SCUBA diver and pilot. In 2020, his 30th year with the department, he was commended in a ceremony during which he received the special coin. "He hands me everything to take home except for the coin. I'm not sure why, but he kept the coin. The next morning he came home and said, ‘Well, I didn't have that coin for very long,'" recalled Holbert's wife, Lisa. "He said, ‘Troy took a hard turn and the coin was just gone.' I said, ‘What do you mean?' He said it rolled, and it went down into a crack, and it's somewhere in the streets of Carrollton." Holbert passed away 6 months later.  

Firefighters in Casa Grande received concerning test results when nearly half of a hazmat team tested for elevated levels of arsenic during their annual heavy metal testing. None of the seven firefighters knew they had high levels of the naturally occurring chemical that can cause cancer. Six of the seven are stationed at the same firehouse in Casa Grande. "That was our immediate concern that something in the station was doing this," said Casa Grande Fire Department Chief Dave Kean. Kean said he gave bottled water to the team and paid an independent lab to test the water at the firehouse. The results obtained by Arizona's Family came back clean. Now, he's trying to find the link between firefighters with arsenic in their system. "We are doing some, lack of a better term, contact tracing," he said.  

VIDEO: There are currently about 45 fire trucks and engines in service with the Denver Fire Department. But one engine in particular, that no longer fights fires, holds a job that might be comparable in importance. And there was a time that it might have been lost forever. "If it could talk, it would be a bedtime story that would last a decade," retired Denver firefighter Dan Farley said, smiling when referencing his 'passion' for nearly 15 years. Farley is the director of the Denver Firefighters Museum. Part of his job includes the upkeep of several antique fire trucks that call the museum home. The centerpiece of that collection is Engine Number Four. "It was used for public relations for the museum," he explained. The so-called ‘rig' is from the 1950s, and was used by the museum until one day in May of 2012.  

VIDEO: Firefighters save lives. But Friday night, the team at Chesterfield Fire Rescue in Burke County had no idea they'd be saving one of their own. A call came in sending firefighter David Hart to a camper trailer fire on Bristol Creek Avenue this past Friday. Hart was first to arrive and was preparing the water pumps when he noticed he didn't feel right. When he collapsed, his fellow firefighters rushed to help him, immediately starting CPR and using a defibrillator to bring him back to life. "It was under five minutes, but it felt like eternity," Amanda Buff, who first performed CPR on Hart, said. "This is like an everyday thing for us. We respond to cardiac arrests all the time, but it feels more personal when it's one of your own people." Hart said Friday's scare was his eighth heart attack, and said he was dead for almost five minutes before his team resuscitated him.  

Firefighter Andrew Burton won the title of 2023 World's Strongest Firefighter at the Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio, competing against firefighters from as far away as Great Britain and the Czech Republic. "Firefighting and being a strongman are both important to me," Burton said. "I don't only want to identify with my work. I feel like I am both a firefighter and a strongman. Both are about moving efficiently. Being a firefighter and strongman complement one another." During the two-day event, Burton competed against more than 120 men and women to earn the title of "World's Strongest Firefighter." As a seasoned strongman competitor, he came into the competition with a winning strategy: Have a good time. "You don't need to blow all your energy in the preliminary competition," he said.