New interactive map: Raleigh-Durham area plane crashes. With an emphasis on major / serious / notable. Displays information about crash sites in Wake, Durham, Orange, Harnett, Johnston, and Franklin counties. Most are exact or close-close locations. Some are noted with question marks, and tagged in a general location. Let’s calls this the final-for-now version. Will …
Continue reading ‘Interactive Map of Local Plane Crash Sites’ »
This was originally posted to Legeros Fire Line as a Facebook posting. Who’s the new Car 1 in Raleigh, following the retirement of Chief McGrath on [November 1]? Last week, interim Chief of Department was announced as… drum roll… retired Asst. Chief Brad Harvey. More on Chief McGrath’s retirement in a moment. Chief Harvey came …
The city of Raleigh has been served by sixteen career Fire Chiefs since 1912. And effective [tomorrow, November 1, 2019], Fire Chief John T. McGrath has retired. That’s a historical milestone, as he’s the city’s second-longest serving fire chief, with 13.8 years of service. Only Chief Keeter (1955 to 1973) had a longer tenure, with …
Time for another chart! Here’s the visual history of the steam fire engines in North Carolina, beginning with their heyday in the 1860s and 1870s. They were labor savers that transformed the hand-powered fire service, although a few steamers were also hand-pulled during their early years. See the chart in JPG format (2.4M) or PDF …
Continue reading ‘Visual History of North Carolina Steam Fire Engines’ »
This is a blog version of a Facebook posting, about details and units at a four-alarm explosion and fire in Charlotte. The narrative has been updated a bit, from the original posting. Charlotte Observer photo Four alarms were struck at a house explosion on Charlotte on Tuesday, July 3. The incident was dispatched just before …
The Wake County EMS System has a new numbering system for their ambulances. Now based on geographic district and shift configuration. Among the notable changes: Two-digit numbers for all ambulances. Single digits reserved for special event units. _7, _8, _9 reserved for peak-load units. The transition started around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday and finished around …
Continue reading ‘New Numbering for Wake County EMS System’ »
There’s a new source of digitized proceedings of the early conferences of the North Carolina State Firemen’s Association. The Internet Archive (archive.org) has digitized a portion of the proceedings in the North Carolina Collection at the University of North Carolina. The direct links are listed below, and each year’s proceedings is fully-searchable. There are also …
Continue reading ‘New Source of Digitized Conference Proceedings’ »
Here’s the run card for New Hope Fire Department’s major woods fire last week, on Wednesday, May 29. Some 50 acres were involved, and threatened some residential structures. The resources included 60 firefighters, 34+ pieces of apparatus, and a complete EMS box alarm with 16+ EMS personnel. The first units were dispatched at 5:02 p.m., …
Change log. May 10. Evening. New map, updated with response districts instead of municipal and ETJ areas as base map. May 10. Morning. Slight edits. Noting that existing Cary P25 radio system being used. Annotating map, noting that shaded areas are municipal and ETJ boundaries. Etc. Introduction On Tuesday, May 7, the fire departments of …
Continue reading ‘Cary + Apex + Morrisville – New Fire System in Service’ »
We’re ten days away from this year’s NCFFF memorial service. Here are details and the list of this year’s honored. LODD information via Google. The North Carolina Fallen Firefighters Foundation will honor seven firefighters who died in the line of duty in the past year, plus one who passed away in 2014. The 14th annual …
Continue reading ‘North Carolina Fallen Firefighters Ceremony – May 4, 2019’ »