Free Republic

'INSPIRING' VISIT & MEET WITH BRAVEST Sarah Palin yesterday made an unscheduled tour of a visitors center at Ground Zero dedicated to those who lost their lives in the 9/11 terror attacks. The Republican vice-presidential nominee nodded her head several times and said, "Oh, my goodness," while a retired firefighter showed her pictures of the burning World Trade Center and exhibits that highlighted the moments the hijacked planes struck each tower. PHOTOS: Palin In NYC - Day 3 Her tour guide was Lee Ielpi, whose son Jonathan, a firefighter, died at the World Trade Center. Palin told Ielpi, "My parents...

JUNCTION CITY, Calif. (CBS) ― Nine people are missing and feared dead in a helicopter crash in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, a Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said Wednesday. The crash happened Tuesday night as the helicopter was transporting firefighters battling a wildfire north of Junction City. FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said the helicopter was carrying 11 firefighters and two crew members when it went down. Four people have been taken to the hospital with severe burns. Two of the survivors were in critical condition at the University of California Medical Center in Sacramento, Forest Service spokesman Mike Odle said Wednesday,...

Members of the honor society for the Boy Scouts of America who had to change their service project plans in Wyoming when the U.S. Forest Service instead allowed the Rainbow Family hippie group to use a location the Scouts had sought now are helping the federal agency fight a forest fire in the state. According to a report in the Casper Star-Tribune the Scouts, some of an estimated 1,000 members of the Order of the Arrow in the state, have "stepped in" to help firefighters in the Bridger-Teton National Forest fight the New Fork Lakes fire, about 19 miles north...

It seems the mainstream media loves cats and will gives them favorable treatment all the time. That’s why I find it incumbent upon myself to put stories on this blog about the realty of the the feline class. It doesn’t hurt if there’s a degrading picture to go along with it. Take for instance this story of a kitty wasting taxpayer resources, by getting her head stuck in a jar.

A crew of 44 Australian and New Zealand firefighters will leave for the United States today, to supervise teams battling fires there. Most, including firefighters from Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia, will leave from Melbourne airport just before 8:00am (AEST). The nine Victorians come from the Country Fire Authority, the Department of Sustainability and Environment, Parks Victoria and Melbourne Water. DSE state duty officer John Lloyd says the American fire season, which normally runs from mid August to mid September, has come early. "California in particular has had a large number of fire starts, and their current weather...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Exhausted firefighters raced to contain hundreds of wildfires raging across California as forecasters warned on Sunday that a looming heatwave was set to deliver drier, hotter conditions. More than 330 wildfires blazed across the state, as firefighters focused their efforts near the tourist haven of Big Sur and the town of Goleta, near Santa Barbara, 103 miles (165 kilometers) north of Los Angeles. The blazes have burned around 559,000 acres (239,000 hectares) across California since igniting on June 20, when lightning from dry thunderstorms triggered a series of forest infernos. Firefighters reported some progress in their...

...Syndicated cartoonist Ted Rall is no stranger to controversy. After drawing a cartoon critical of some 9/11 widows capitalizing on their husbands' deaths, about 40 firefighters with axes from the local firehouse gathered outside Rall's Upper West Side apartment, screaming and hollering. It took a friend showing up to take pictures of the public servants to get them to disperse. This unnerved Rall, because if the people who are supposed to be protecting you end up attacking you, where else can you go for protection? "Firefighters are psychotic," Rall said. "They don't work hard, and every five years or so...

Firefighters in Malmö in southern Sweden are demanding police escorts on calls. The firefighters have had enough of threats and violence in some of the city's rougher areas. After being attacked by stones on a recent call, they are threatening not to take calls to Rosengård without a police escort. They are also demanding shatterproof windows and surveillance cameras on their vehicles. Bertil Ahlgren, a spokesman at Jägersros fire station where two of the men worked, told TT that their work situation was "completely unacceptable". The firemen were attacked twice last week during calls in the city's Rosengård suburb. In...

CHEYENNE -- City firefighters looked like they were out of uniform on Friday. But they were making a statement with their new red shirts in place of the traditional blue that the department wears every other day of the week. It is a statement of solidarity with others who put their lives on the line every day for their fellow citizens -- soldiers. Cheyenne Fire and Rescue is joining four other departments in Wyoming and thousands of union firefighters across the U.S. and Canada in wearing red T-shirts on Fridays to show support for troops overseas. Many of Cheyenne's firefighters...

A new color graces the gay pride rainbow flag: fire engine red. Members of the Austin Fire Department Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered and Friends will take part in the Austin Pride Parade today, riding on a fire truck and marking the organization's second appearance in the annual event that celebrates the gay community in Austin. Lt. Jan Wesson, who leads the group, said it received great support last year from attendees, who named the truck "Best Vehicle." "That was just the highlight of my career," said Wesson, who has served in the Fire Department for 24 years and came out...

6/9/2008 - KABUL, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Eleven members of the Afghan National Army Air Corps recently became the first graduates of the Air Corps Firefighting School May 29 at Kabul. The graduates completed four months of class work, countless hands-on exercises extinguishing various types of fires and practicing lifesaving techniques under the direction of American Airmen and firefighters. "Today is a very big day for the air corps," said Brig. Gen. Jay H. Lindell, the Combined Air Power Transition Force commander at the graduation ceremony. "You are your country's future." The increased attention given to the firefighters program will help...

At 9:37 a.m., on 9/11, those aboard Arlington Fire Department Engine 101 were headed north on I-395 for a training session near the Pentagon. Firefighter Jamie Lewis saw the American Airlines Flight 77 first. “Hey, look at the plane!” he shouted. “What’s he doing?” Nearby, on the Columbia Pike, Paramedic Claude Conde was loading a stroke victim into an ambulance when a plane roared overhead. “He had never seen a plane so close. Something wasn’t right. The airport wasn’t far away, but the plane was already at treetop level, well below the glide path it should be on for National...

Fresh Air from WHYY, May 22, 2008 · After American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, it took firefighters three days to extinguish the flames. Firefighter Patrick Creed and journalist Rick Newman join Fresh Air to talk about the Pentagon blaze and the book they wrote about it, Firefight: Inside the Battle to Save the Pentagon on 9/11. Firefight tells the stories of the people inside the Pentagon when the plane hit, the rescue efforts that followed the attack and the three-day battle to extinguish the blaze. Firefighters faced unique circumstances, Creed and Newman write,...

"SUNDAY, APRIL 06, 2008 07:50 AM, EDT After 18 months of battling his personal dinosaur, Paxten Andrew Mitchell passed at 7:28AM. I cannot find the words to express my feelings.... He fought throughout the night and morning. We love him so much and he will be sorely missed. -R"

Four people are dead, more than a dozen were injured and at least one person remains trapped in the rubble of a crane collapse in Midtown Saturday in what the mayor called "one of the worst [construction accidents] the city has had." Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta said firefighters will continue the rescue effort through the night in a "painstaking, hand operation, as they try to remove the rubble. Four construction workers were killed when the 15-story crane apparatus collapsed onto a four-story brick townhouse at 305 East 50th Street between First and Second Avenues at about 2:22 p.m. Saturday. Juan...

While Vallejo's finances were plunging faster than a roller coaster at the Six Flags amusement park, the city's firefighters were going abalone diving, grilling tri-tip and drinking cocktails on the public's dime, records show.Under their contract, the firefighters union has been allowed since 2003 to charge the city 600 hours a year - at a cost of more than $24,000 annually - for union activities that were approved by the union's chief. The junkets included an annual Seafood Extravaganza at the fairgrounds, a 10-kilometer run ending with a party at the amusement park and a dunk tank at the Waterfront...

Monday, March 03, 2008 Update 6:15 p.m.: The victim of the Wendy's shooting has been identified as a 42-year-old Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue Lieutenant Rafael (Ray) Vazquez. Vazquez was on lunch break with his wife and child, said Deputy Chief of Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue Steve Delai. Five other people were shot in the restaurant at lunchtime. Vazquez's wife works for the Palm Springs Police Department. She was hired in 2000 as a dispatcher for Palm Springs Police. In 2005, she became a corporal and now runs the midnight shift. She was uninjured. She had just stepped outside to put...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - A gunman wearing a jacket and tie wordlessly and randomly opened fire inside a Wendy's during the lunchtime rush Monday, killing a firefighter who'd gone back to fetch his child's toy and wounding five other diners. He then turned the gun on himself. ADVERTISEMENT "This was not a robbery. He didn't demand anything...," said Paul Miller, a Palm Beach County sheriff's spokesman. "Looks like this was just another random shooting like we've seen around the United States." The 42-year-old victim, a Palm Beach County Fire-Rescue lieutenant, had met his wife and child at the restaurant,...

Hockley County authorities say they've solved a string of intentionally set fires, but the suspects are surprising. Sheriff's deputies arrested 17-year-old Jeremy Solis late Sunday night. Solis and 22-year-old Noel Escobedo are charged with arson for allegedly setting several fires in the Ropesville area. Here's the shocker, both men are volunteer fire fighters in Ropesville. NewsChannel 11 told you about these fires earlier this month, when the sheriff's office asked for viewer tips to find the person setting these fires. There was even a $10,000 reward offered to get the suspect off the streets, but it turns out, all investigators...

PHOENIX - For centuries people have looked to the skies for answers. Is there life outside our solar system? Have UFO's visited our planet? Because our sun is a star, does that mean the thousands of stars visible in the night sky could be someone else's sun? The questions, and the universe, are endless. Events like the March 1997 mass-sighting of strange night lights above the Valley, popularly dubbed "Phoenix Lights", have generated questions and turned skeptics into believers. A 600-page guide may lend credibility to UFO believers. The Fire Officer's Guide To Disaster Control can apparently be found in...

Attacks on firefighters rising, says union Firefighters are being subjected to an increasing number of violent attacks despite Government claims to the contrary, new figures show. The FBU wants better protection for fire crews Crews are regularly being spat on and pelted with bricks, bottles, burning wood and stones as they try to save lives across England and Wales. The Fire Brigades Union has revealed that assaults increased by 15 per cent last year, although government statistics show a fall of 68 per cent. Figures obtained by the union under the Freedom of Information Act reveal the number of attacks...

Rudy Giuliani's plan to ride in a Miami-Dade firetruck in Sunday's Three Kings parade has outraged some firefighters who say the presidential candidate has ''lied'' about his 9/11 record because he did too little to equip and protect emergency workers. The controversy -- unwittingly set in motion by County Commissioner Rebeca Sosa -- has politically pitted firefighters against one another in Miami-Dade as well as in New York. To quiet the feud, the IAFF's local Miami-Dade chapter, 1403, will cover its numbers on the union-owned firetruck by draping it with an American flag. Giuliani's campaign said he will probably ride...

BOISE, Idaho — A fire station crew must be a little embarrassed by the way some of this state's famous potatoes got fried. Boise firefighters returning from a medical call had to turn their hose on the firehouse kitchen after an overheated pan full of Tater Tots melted and set some cabinets ablaze. The Christmas Eve fire at Station 8 was quickly extinguished, with no injuries. No damage estimate was available. -snip-

The day got off to an interesting start when a fire broke out at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, located across the street from the White House. Press Secretary Dana Perino: Today, at 9:15 a.m., the D.C. Fire Department received a call about smoke in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building -- that's also known as the EEOB. Firefighters arrived and found that the second floor through the fifth floor of the EEOB was fairly filled with smoke.... They were able to identify, isolate and … put out the fire within 30 minutes. The Vice President's Ceremonial Office received smoke and...

BOSTON — A Boston firefighter is mending from what could have been deadly stab wounds he suffered early yesterday morning when he was allegedly jumped in East Boston while off duty by a group of Hispanic males who told him they "don't want any gringo here." Though police are not classifying the incident as racially fueled, the Boston Police Department's Community Disorders Unit is investigating. The 32-year-old jake, whose name officials were not releasing, is white. Ironically, the firefighter's life was likely saved because he sought refuge from his alleged assailants at Engine 5 on Saratoga Street - the station...

A firefighter who reported finding a knotted rope and a threatening note with a drawing of a noose in an East Baltimore station house last month had placed the items there himself, city officials said yesterday. The man was suspended last week for performance-related issues and will likely face additional punishment, fire officials said. Sterling Clifford, a spokesman for the Police Department and for Mayor Sheila Dixon, said the man admitted to the hoax and will not face criminal charges. Officials identified the firefighter who they say acknowledged writing the note as Donald Maynard, a firefighter-paramedic apprentice who is black....

A group of 9/11 firefighters and victims' family members with eyes on derailing Republican Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign is close to a decision on forming an entity that would run issue ads in key early nominating states. "TV made him a hero, and we'll use TV to take him down," New York Fire Chief Jim Riches told ABC News. The final decision about the formation of an outside entity will happen sometime within the next few weeks after the group finalizes its plans at a meeting scheduled for after Thanksgiving. So far, though, under Riches' leadership, the group has sought...

A few words for those who care about American fire fighters, the fire fighter's union, fire fighter politics, and the Democrat Party. Career fire fighters are predominately conservative. The union leadership is predominately liberal. We are being misrepresented. Our money is pushing politics and politicians we don't believe in, and yes it's largely our own fault. The yellow signs stating fire fighter's for Kerry in the last election and fire fighter's for Dodd in this election stirs this fire fighter to provide you with some insight and some facts on this subject. International Association of Fire Fighters: Represents approximately 80%...

Rapid development in wildfire-prone areas and continued bone-dry weather have alarmed California firefighters, who began a sweeping assessment of fire danger Tuesday and what's needed to meet it. Catastrophic wildfires that burned across the state last month and in 2003 were of an intensity that should be witnessed rarely - perhaps once a century, they say. The proximity of those fires has raised fears that furious blazes could become more frequent, threatening lives and property. "We've had our second 100-year fire in four years. So, if you are going to have a 100-year fire every four years, it seems that...

RANCHO SANTA FE, Calif. - Bryce Carrier’s cellphone rang at 3 a.m.: Help! The fire is almost to my house. Carrier hopped into his heavy-duty red Ford F-550 truck and sped to northeast Poway, dodging fallen eucalyptus and heading straight toward the wind-whipped blaze. He arrived to find flames marching up an embankment toward the multimillion-dollar home. Yanking out the hose in the back of his truck, he began dousing fire retardant along the perimeter of the property, the shrubs and the roof. When the flames hit the milky white liquid, they stopped. Another home saved. Carrier is a certified...

OTTAWA -- A coalition of environmental groups and firefighters are calling on the federal government to ban flame retardants they say are toxic and pose a serious health risk. The group of chemicals are called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, and are commonly found in many consumer products, such as the casings of television sets, curtains and carpets. Numerous scientific studies indicate these chemicals are linked to serious health issues, including neurological and reproductive problems, said Lisa Gue, environmental health policy analyst with the David Suzuki Foundation. "We are calling for all chemicals in this class ... to be banned,"...

Here’s a simple way to find more money to hire more firemen and buy more fire-fighting equipment in Orange County: Cut O.C. firemen’s extravagant pay and benefits from $175,000 a year on average to $150,000. (Some even made as much as $268,000 a year.) At $150,000, they still would be making double the average family income for a resident in Orange County. Cutting their pay $25,000 would be a reduction of 1/7th. That would mean their forces could be augmented by that amount — or a little less, if some of the saved money is used for buying new equipment....

KIAMESHA LAKE, N.Y. — There was a time when comedians would flock to the Concord Hotel, bringing the house down every weekend with ethnic humor, one-liners and a smattering of risqué jokes. Now, firefighters come to this shuttered monstrosity once a year to burn the house down, section by section. From around the state, firefighters arrive at the Concord not for matzo ball soup, but to tramp through its corridors — setting fires and then putting them out — during a training weekend arranged by the New York State Association of Fire Chiefs. Arthur Winarick, a Russian immigrant who acquired...

Green Country volunteers are on their way to help in California. Ten members of the Tulsa chapter of the American Red Cross left for San Diego on Tuesday. The News On 6’s Chris Wright reports all the volunteers have disaster relief experience, but some say they have never seen anything quite like what is going on in California. Despite the fact that they were preparing to head into the heart of a natural disaster, the Red Cross volunteers remained optimistic before leaving for the airport. "I'm not worried, they always keep us safe. I'm anxious, excited ready to go help,”...

In the eyes of Orange County firefighters, it was a battle they didn't have to lose. They watched helplessly as homes burned along Santiago Canyon Road. They ducked beneath fire-retardant tents to escape flames that had gotten too close. They waited for air support that was slow in coming. Orange County Fire Authority Chief Chip Prather said inadequate state resources put his crew in danger and forced him to give up part of Modjeska Canyon to the flames. As more than a dozen fires turned California from a vacation hot spot to a charred landscape, Prather and others questioned whether...

This weekend the President spent the weekend at Camp David returning to the White House today, on Saturday he spoke at a memorial service at the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Park on the National Fire Academy campus in Emmitsburg, Maryland Click here for transcript On Saturday Defense Secretary Robert Gates continued his trip to South America with a visit to Paramaribo. Enjoy your visit to Sanity Island

Autopsies performed on the two hero firefighters who perished battling a West Roxbury blaze on Aug. 29 showed that one of them was legally drunk at the fire while the other had traces of illegal drugs in his bloodstream, three city officials told the Herald. Paul J. Cahill, 55, had a blood alcohol level of .27 - more than three times the legal alcohol limit for motorists - when he was killed fighting the fire at Tai Ho Restaurant on Centre Street in West Roxbury, said three sources with direct knowledge of the state Medical Examiner’s toxicology report that is...

Judge Rules for Bearded DC Firefighters By SARAH KARUSH – 21 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Friday struck down a requirement that firefighters in the District of Columbia be clean-shaven. A group of firefighters who wear beards for religious reasons first sued in 2001 to challenge the fire department's "grooming policy." That policy was replaced with a safety policy in 2005 that held that beards are not compatible with breathing units because they make it impossible to form a tight seal around the face. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled that the district did not meet...

Underwood, Minn. (AP) -- Firefighters in the western Minnesota town of Underwood weren't quite sure what to expect when they got the call: A donkey had fallen down an abandoned well and was trapped. Firefighters quickly realized that the donkey, who belonged to farmer Warren Gundberg who lived about a mile away, couldn't just be pulled from the abandoned well on Bryan Nelson's land. So they started pulling away earth with a Bobcat tractor and dismantling the well block by block on Thursday. Once the west wall of the well had been taken apart, firefighters put a harness around the...

God bless these heroes and all of the men and women fighting to keep America safe. May the families of those who are lost be comforted.

First the people in the towers died. Then the rescue workers. Now first responders are succumbing to a 9/11 illness. The next victims: tens of thousands of ordinary citizens who worked and lived in Lower Manhattan—all of whom were told that the air was safe. While the people who died in the towers and the first responders have gotten much attention from the nation and the press—witness the lead feature from 60 Minutes last night on first responders—the ordinary citizens have gone relatively unnoticed. So Discover has released a package that focuses directly on this final group of 9/11 victims....

WASHINGTON -- Two Siamese cats have D.C. firefighters to thank for saving one of their nine lives. -snip- They quickly knocked out the blaze, but firefighters found two Siamese cats in the basement -- one unconscious and struggling to breath and the other semi-conscious, fire officials said. Rescuers gave oxygen to 3-year-old Nyla and 2-year-old Joe, who were both fully revived within 30 minutes and returned to their grateful owners, fire officials said.

September 3, 2007 By Mark Mix - After years of scheming, waiting, and investing forced dues into the campaigns of their handpicked politicians, Big Labor bosses believe they are just one step away from a big payoff. Their goal is simple: Ram the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill (H.R. 980) into law by any means necessary. Just before the August recess, under suspension of the rules, union-label politicians succeeded in passing the Police and Firefighter Monopoly Bargaining Bill through the House. Thanks to the union bosses' propaganda machine, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ran into little difficulty. Misguided congressmen from...

Rudy Giuliani will speak at the sixth anniversary commemoration the of the 9/11 attacks - bringing protests from his critics.........firefighter families charge that he is being allowed to exploit the event for political gain.

Complaint Filed on Behalf of Firefighters Forced to Participate in San Diego "Gay Pride" SAN DIEGO, August 28, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, announced today that its West Coast Director, San Diego area attorney, Charles LiMandri, filed a sexual harassment and freedom of speech complaint in California state court on behalf of four respected San Diego firefighters. Charles LiMandri was also the Thomas More Law Center's lead counsel in the successful Mt. Soledad Cross case in San Diego. In July, four San Diego firefighters were ordered,...

More than a week after two New York City firefighters died in a smoky fire at the former Deutsche Bank building, city officials relieved three senior fire officers of their posts yesterday, asserting they had failed to inspect the building or to draw up a specific plan on how to fight a fire inside the contaminated tower. At a City Hall news conference yesterday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the local firehouse had not performed any of the required inspections of the building on the edge of ground zero since 2006, even though the 41-story building, damaged in the Sept....

Supporting a candidate simply because you believe he can defeat another candidate is a hollow endorsement. But the greater political miscalculation is Cramer’s willingness to overlook Giuliani’s substantial shortcomings. Giuliani is shamelessly running on his perceived accomplishments following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But his reputation is built more on myth than on fact, and the nation’s paid professional firefighters outline their issues with Giuliani in a documentary that can be found at www. rudy-urbanlegend.com. Giuliani’s treatment of our brothers and sisters with the Fire Department of New York after the terrorist attacks prevents the nation’s career firefighters from...

Yes, the rich are different than the rest of us. A private fire crew dispatched by a national insurance company that caters to wealthy clients is guarding 22 high-end homes threatened by the Castle Rock Fire, a blaze that has forced the evacuation of hundreds of million-dollar homes west of Ketchum. The crew will protect only homes insured by AIG Private Client Group, an insurance company that offers "loss-prevention services" to its wealthiest customers. A truck and two-man crew sent by AIG from Montana arrived in Ketchum about 2 p.m. Wednesday to start dousing properties with Phos-Chek, the same fire...

(WBZ) MILFORD Milford firefighters not only had to extinguish a house fire but they also saved a half-dozen cats from the burning home.

Firefighters die in blaze by ground zero By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer 22 minutes ago NEW YORK - A seven-alarm fire ripped through an abandoned skyscraper next to ground zero in Lower Manhattan Saturday, killing two firefighters who were responding to the blaze. ADVERTISEMENT Officers at the scene were preventing nearby residents from returning to their homes, telling them that authorities were concerned the former Deutsche Bank office building, vacant since the 2001 terrorist attacks turned it into a toxic nightmare, could fall. Mayor Michael Bloomberg said that fear turned out to be unfounded. The plume of gray smoke...