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Scott Dodd has added a new sponsor to his #25 NASCAR Super Late Model. Craig Fire Protection has become the primary sponsor for Dodd
It was a messy Christmas for some residents of a Hollywood apartment complex.
A grease fire on Thursday night set off the sprinkler system in a third-floor apartment, and flooded two other apartments below.
The sprinklers extinguished the fire at the apartment complex, 430 S. Park Rd. in Hollywood. But the water kept on flowing and flooding before firefighters could shut off the system.
About 30 times a year, Texas City Fire Marshal Dennis Harris investigates arson cases. Most of them go unsolved, and the fire bugs are never brought to justice.
Harris hopes the city commissioners will support his proposal to make it
The fire chief says it’ll be a while before they can release the identity of the five men killed Monday morning.
Officials are working to contact the men’s families, which is challenging because they were homeless.
Paris Fire Chief Ronnie Grooms says flames broke out at the “Christians In Action” shelter at about 3 am.
The shelter has been around for more than 20 years and provides homeless people with food and a place to stay.
Chief Grooms says the fire started in the storeroom, and the building had several fire code violations. “In the building they’ve created cubicles for people to have access to, and also built an upstairs area for people, and it’s in that upstairs area that we found the bodies.”
Fire officials say the building had no sprinkler system, and part of it’s metal roof collapsed under the heat of the flames.
Initial reports said crews were looking for two others, but firefighters say they have found those two safe. They say the two would stay their often, but didn’t stay there last night.
At this time the cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Storage Facility in Rochester Burns Down in Overnight Fire Building lacked alarms or a sprinkler system
Early Tuesday morning, a large fire broke out at a storage facility near the Rochester airport.
According to Dep. Fire Chief Lyle Felsch, the fire was reported around 3:30 a.m. in the 6800 block of 10th Ave. SW. The fire was subdued by about 6 a.m., but crews stayed on-scene until 11 a.m. as a precaution.
The 4,900 sq. ft. building, estimated at $500,000, is a complete loss.
The facility was used by a White Bear Lake-based environmental clean-up company called Mavo Systems. The building did not have a sprinkler or smoke alarm system.
Foul play is not suspected; the cause of the fire is still being investigated.
A bill that has been stalled on Beacon Hill for nearly a decade has finally passed the Massachusetts House and Senate.
The legislation was filed in the wake of a deadly fire in Newton, Massachusetts that claimed the lives of five people in February of 2000. That fire was the focus of the NECN investigative documentary last spring titled The Forgotten Fire.
The bill, if signed, will require owners of commercial buildings larger than 7500 square feet to install automatic sprinkler systems. Representative Ruth Balser first filed the bill in 2001, and has refiled every year since.
Governor Patrick has ten days to sign or veto the bill.
Fire fighters say sprinkler systems would have lessened the damage to a group of Dargaville stores.
A fire ripped through five buildings in the Northland town on Monday night, destroying four of them. The blaze began in a paint store.
Dargaville Volunteer Fire Brigade chief fire officer Michael King says there were no fire alarms or sprinklers in the building. He says the situation would not have got so out of control if there had been.
Mr King says hopefully it will encourage people constructing new buildings in the area to make them fire safe.
Police and the fire service are hoping to establish the cause of the fire today. Mr King says the blaze may have been due to an electrical fault.
Firefighters worked through Monday night on the blaze and Mr King says they are very grateful to locals who brought them food.
A three alarm blaze broke out at Shelton High School this afternoon. Luckily, school was not in session, but a recent Count on 8 Investigation revealed that the section of the school where the fire started did not have a sprinkler system.
The fire broke out in a second floor storage room around 1 p.m. It’s a section of Shelton High School were News Channel 8 uncovered that there were no fire sprinklers in an apparent violation of the State Fire Safety Code.
“It was an original section of the building that contains no sprinklers in it,” said Asst. Chief Michael Ullrich of the Shelton FD.
But News Channel 8 wanted to know if the lack of sprinklers caused the fire to spread today.
“It perhaps could have controlled the fire and knock it down in a more of a timely fashion,” said Ullrich.
In November, Shelton Mayor Mark Lauretti and others seemingly downplayed the problem.
“I do know, thankfully, that there are very few incidents that occur in a building like this and that there’s not much that can burn except paper and people,” Mayor Lauretti said.
Ironically, the fire today started in a room used to store paper.
The city recently spent over $20 million to build an addition to the school. They spent millions on a new roof and heating and cooling system that sustained heavy damage in today’s fire. But they did not install sprinklers in the original building.
Members of the Shelton Board of Education who minimized the concerns raised in our investigation are not doing so now.
“It is an issue now,” said James Orazietti from the Shelton Board of Education.
Shelton’s Fire Marshal James Tortora insisted back in November that sprinklers were not required in the school saying, “According to the state the existing portion of the building did not need to be fire sprinklered.”
Tortora would not comment to News Channel 8 when we approached him today.
A Lakefield man faces charges following a late Saturday night confrontation with police.
According to city police, at about 11:30 p.m., officers were called to the Thirsty Loon Bar on Queen Street in Lakefield concerning someone damaging property. Upon arriving, officers noticed two plastic patio chairs had been thrown onto the street. A man then approached police, his fists raised as if to fight. As he walked away, officers caught up to the man and took him into custody.
Later, while in a cell at the police station, the same man damaged a fire sprinkler head.
Thomas Alexander Richard, 43, of Murray Street in Lakefield, is charged with two counts of mischief under $5,000 and failure to comply with a condition of an undertaking. He was released for a Jan. 29 court appearance.
Damage to the patio chairs is estimated at $20 while damage to the sprinkler head tallied $500. Fire Sprinkler Supply
Fire sprinklers will soon be required in all new Anne Arundel homes after the County Council approved the mandate last night.
Firefighters have lobbied for the across-the-board sprinkler rule for the better part of a decade, and one veteran volunteer firefighter called last night’s victory a “landmark piece of legislation.”
With the New Year, the council also resolved several other lingering issues from 2008, including tweaking the county’s doghouse rule, expanding the solar energy tax credit and rejecting a measure that mandates pollution-reducing septic systems in some homes in the environmentally sensitive Critical Area of the Chesapeake Bay.
Fire Chief J. Robert Ray urged the council to adopt the new sprinkler plan, which expands the current mandate for townhouses, duplexes and apartment buildings to include single-family homes.
“Tonight you have the opportunity to tell all Anne Arundel County residents that their lives are valuable, not just those who are protected by happenstance because of where they live,” Chief Ray said.
Recently retired former Chief David Stokes and a Maryland State Fire Marshal both attended last night’s council meeting to watch the sprinkler legislation pass 6-1. Councilman Ed Middlebrooks, R-Severn, voted against the bill.
Home builders have resisted mandatory sprinklers in residential homes because the systems add several thousand dollars to the purchase price and buyers don’t want them. The home builders were pushing for an optional program that would require them to offer sprinklers to home buyers. A similar program in Howard County showed most buyers elect not to have the systems installed.
Prince George’s County has required sprinklers in all homes since 1992, and fire officials report that there have been no fire deaths in homes with sprinklers since then.
Last night, representatives of the home building industry asked the council to delay the bill for at least a year because the slumping housing market could not support the added costs of installing sprinkler systems.
The measure introduced by Council Vice Chairman Cathy Vitale, R-Severna Park, whose husband is a career firefighter for the county, came after two devastating fires in the Annapolis area late last year.
In October, a man, 42, died in a fire at his home, which had neither a sprinkler system nor working smoke detectors. In December, a five-alarm blaze destroyed three homes in the Oyster Bay neighborhood before firefighters could extinguish the flames.
New homes will be exempt from the mandatory sprinkler rule if the house’s water pressure can’t meet some technical specifications laid out in county law. Those would be homes on well water for the most part.
Although the measure has seen wide support from fire prevention officials in council chambers, at least one local architect has cautioned that enough safeguards are not yet in place. Fred D. Fishback has warned that architectural codes relating to the design and installation of sprinkler systems are not advanced enough to protect homeowners from unforeseen circumstances, such as frozen pipes.
Doghouses
Also last night, the council put to bed a debate over the county’s doghouse rule that began more than six months ago. The rule previously required any dog owner to provide a shelter for any pooch left confined outside. A prominent environmental activist was written a ticket for the offense in April, even though her collie was not in danger and she was watching the dog from a window. Technically, anyone who lets their animal out could be cited for not having a proper doghouse.
Councilman Ed Middlebrooks offered two bills to rewrite the rule in order to protect responsible homeowners from having to build an unnecessary doghouse. The version unanimously passed by the council last night requires only that an animal has access to shelter, and was accompanied by changes to the rules for animal control officers so that the rule will be applied only when the dog’s safety is in question.
“We are confident that the change we have suggested will make it easier for residents to comply with the law,” said Joseph Lamp, an animal activist and head of the Committee for Animal Shelter Issues who recommended the bill’s final language.
Septic systems
Additionally, the council defeated by 5-2 a bill that would have required homes near the waterfront with failing septic systems to replace them with pollution-reducing systems. The only votes supporting the bill came from Councilman Josh Cohen, D-Annapolis, and Jamie Benoit, D-Crownsville, two of the bills three co-sponsors.
The measure was widely considered a good environmental policy, but politicians were hung up on the details of how to pay for the plan. Sponsors proposed using a stream of state grant money from the Bay Restoration Fund to offset the cost to residents, but restrictions the county Health Department placed in the grant agreement were too onerous to pass the bill.
Anne Arundel is the only jurisdiction in the state that forbids grant recipients from putting additions on their homes if they accept the grant money. Councilmen decried that provision as unfair and a disincentive to helping reduce the nitrogen pollution emitted by septic systems. The excess nutrient helps fuel a cycle of algae blooms that blocks sunlight to plants and deprives marine life of oxygen.
Councilmen have asked the county to change the no-addition rule, but county officials say it helps prevent tax dollars from subsidizing development in the Critical Area of the Chesapeake Bay.
West/Rhode Riverkeeper Chris Trumbauer, who also finds the grant agreement onerous, still asked the council to pass the measure last night.
“It’s the easiest thing to do for our rivers,” Mr. Trumbauer said. “And it’s already paid for. … If you don’t pass this bill, please do something for our rivers.”
Although this bill was dead, councilmen bandied-about the idea of returning to the concept and eliminating the no-addition rule from the grant program, which currently is optional for homeowners who want to apply.
Only 72 projects have accepted the grant money, although 326 people have applied for it. Several councilmen blamed the no-addition rule as the culprit for the luke-warm success of the program.
Health Department officials said the program is new and it’s typical for nascent programs to start off slowly.
Other business
The council also passed a bill to expand the county’s solar tax credit to include solar panels that generate electricity. They also pulled a bill to help save the popular south county produce stand Dick and Jane’s Farm, but councilmen reintroduced another bill to accomplish the same mission.
That bill is scheduled for a public hearing on Feb. 2.