Here’s the latest news from San Francisco Firefighters Local 798…
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San Francisco Firefighters Knock Down 2-Alarm House Fire in Ingleside District
A two-alarm house fire in San Francisco’s Merced Heights Thursday afternoon left one person displaced, fire officials said. At about 2 p.m., firefighters responded to the blaze, happening in the 100 block of Garfield Street. At the scene, firefighters found flames coming from the home’s second story. Firefighters were able to rescue a man from inside the second floor. The man was evaluated by medical staff and found to be uninjured, Lt. Jonathan Baxter said. A separate person who lives in the home was left displaced, he added.
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Photo by Jessica Christian/The Chronicle |
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S.F. expands authority to impose mental health holds. Paramedics can now place people in confinement
San Francisco paramedics — not just police officers and doctors — can now order people to be held in confinement for up to 72 hours if they believe those people are experiencing a mental health crisis and are a danger to themselves or others. A new law will give about three dozen paramedics the authority to impose mental health holds on disturbed people as the city turns to non-police responses to deal with crises often visible on the streets. The Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the legislation sponsored by Supervisor Ahsha Safaí on Tuesday. “Currently firefighters and paramedics perform medical, behavior and social needs assessment but don’t have the ability to initiate temporary mental health holds when someone is in real crisis,” Safaí said during a committee meeting earlier this month.
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'We've got people coming from all over': Firefighters deployed from across US to fight growing Bootleg Fire
Firefighters from more than a dozen states, as far away as New York and Florida, have been deployed to help fight southern Oregon’s Bootleg Fire. A spokesman for the incident management team said Thursday the extra resources are absolutely necessary for a fire this large. The Bootleg grew again overnight, clocking in at 227,234 acres Thursday morning. It's the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. It's also larger than any wildfire that burned in Oregon in 2020. “We've got [crews from] Arizona, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alaska, Oklahoma, Georgia, Michigan, New York,” said Marcus Kauffman, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Incident Management Team 1. “We've got people coming from all over.” San Francisco Fire tweeted a video Thursday of one of their trucks headed to help battle the Bootleg Fire, burning just east of Medford.
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California Fire Map & Tracker
An interactive map of wildfires burning across the Bay Area and California. Read up on what you need to know about California fire season in 2021.
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Tent fire on 15th and South Van Ness spreads to nearby building
In the early hours of the morning on Sunday, July 11, a makeshift tent on the sidewalk caught fire, and the fire spread to the nearby building at the corner of 15th and South Van Ness, damaging the exterior of the corner apartment, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. The fire department was initially called at 3:37 a.m. By 3:57 the fire had been extinguished. Lt. Jonathan Baxter, the public information officer for the San Francisco Fire Department, said there were no injuries. The whereabouts of the tent dweller are unknown.
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Video courtesy of the SFFD |
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Improper Battery Disposal Causes Small Fire At San Francisco Recology Facility
A one-alarm fire that broke out at a Recology facility in San Francisco Monday afternoon was being attributed to improper disposal of batteries, a firefighter said. Around 3:30 p.m. the San Francisco Fire Department responded to the company’s sorting warehouse on the 500 block of Tunnel Avenue. The fire broke out on a metal pile that was being sorted. By 4:15 p.m. the fire was under control. No injuries were reported and all employees were accounted for, according to firefighters.
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Crews Put Out Fire at Parkmerced
SFFD Battalion 9 Crews arrived on scene to extinguish a fire in the laundry room at Parkmerced.
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Crews contain fire reported at West Portal Elementary School
Crews have contained a shed fire reported at West Portal Elementary School on Lenox Way in San Francisco. The fire was located between Taraval Street and Verdun. The Muni Outbound L Line bus was impacted.
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3 hurt – including 2 kids – in San Francisco crash
One vehicle rear-ended another vehicle on Interstate 280 southbound in San Francisco’s Outer Mission neighborhood, causing the car that hit the vehicle to overturn Sunday evening, California Highway Patrol Officer Mark Andrews said. The crash was first reported around 5:05 p.m. Sunday, he said. The occupants of the overturned car were apparently unharmed and escaped the vehicle on foot, Andrews said. Shortly after they exited the car, they were picked up by another vehicle to flee the scene, he said. From the victim vehicle, two children and one adult were taken to a trauma center, San Francisco fire officials reported on Twitter.
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Local 798 Presents “Road to Recovery: Invest in Your Safety”
Through all of the challenges of 2020, our San Francisco Firefighters and Paramedics continued to go above and beyond the call of duty to provide lifesaving service under the most difficult and dangerous circumstances imaginable. As San Francisco continues to recover, it is critical that we secure adequate funding to support:
• An increase in staffing levels of SFFD Firefighters, Paramedics, EMTs, and administrative personnel.
• The replacement of our aging fleet of ambulances and fire apparatus.
• The lifesaving Disaster Preparedness projects and programs of the SFFD.
Day in and day out, SFFD Firefighters are on the frontlines working to carry out City-led initiatives, including Community Paramedicine programs such as the Street Crisis Response Team and EMS-6, in order to keep our city safe. We need continued support and investment in our Department so we can achieve our mutual goals.
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S.F. sees slight dip in fatal overdoses, but deaths are still staggeringly high
After a calamitous, record-breaking year for fatal overdoses in San Francisco, the city has seen a slight decline in monthly deaths since the beginning of 2021. But the numbers are still staggeringly high. Seventy three people died of an overdose in January, compared to 45 in June. In all, about 344 people have fallen victim to the city’s drug crisis in just the first six months of the year, according to preliminary data released by the Medical Examiner’s office Tuesday.
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California COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker
California will adopt an age-based system to vaccinate residents and turn over its distribution to the health insurance company Blue Shield in an effort to speed up what has been among the slowest vaccination rollouts in the country. Meanwhile, the discovery of new variants that may spread more easily, including a mutation that took hold in the Bay Area in December, makes the rollout even more urgent to fix. San Francisco has said it wants to vaccinate all eligible residents by June; at the same time, questions have arisen over why people from out of town can get vaccinated there. Here's the latest on when and where you will be able to get a vaccine across the Bay Area. If you are scheduled for an appointment, here's what to do before and after getting the shot.
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Smoke from California's wildfires could contain dangerous levels of toxic metals, new research shows
As California’s fire season begins to cough up nasty, gray air — all too familiar over the past few years — scientists are learning that wildfire smoke may be a lot more harmful than previously thought, even for those living far from the flames. Several recent studies reveal new and elevated risks associated with smoke exposure, including lead poisoning, increased susceptibility to COVID-19 and more severe flare-ups of respiratory illnesses, like asthma. The findings come alongside research that’s in the works on the long-term effects of even brief bouts with smoke, which could include cancer and heart disease.
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Bay Area firefighters prepare for bike ride to New York City to honor 9/11 victims
A group of Bay Area firefighters plans to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks with a cross country bike ride ending in New York city. Because some days in American history are so significant, people can remember exactly where they were, even decades later. September 11, 2001 is one of those days for retired Santa Clara firefighter Darrell Sales. "That morning I happen to come into work and we had a group of 17 brand new firefighters that were in the last week of their fire academy," Sales said. "For the first two or three hours of our training, all of us watched as the events unfolded." They watched nearly 3,000 Americans killed on that day, including 343 firefighters.
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Retired SF Firefighter Obituary: Albert Wirdzek
Albert Wirdzek was a resident of Moss Beach for over 50 years. On June 7, 2021, he died peacefully, at the age of 94, with his devoted wife, Eilene, by his side, in the home he built. Albert was born in Utah to parents who had emigrated from Czechoslovakia. Shortly after, he and his family moved to San Francisco when he was still a young boy. After graduating from Balboa High School, Al enlisted in the Navy. He served on the Battleship USS Idaho, which participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima, the invasion of Okinawa, and the liberation of the Philippines. His ship was present in Tokyo Bay for the signing ceremony of the surrender of Japan on Sept. 2, 1945. After the war, Al went to work for a prominent commercial sign and painting company in San Francisco. He later inherited the company and continued to operate it into the 1990s. During this time, Al joined the San Francisco Fire Department. He was on the first SFFD scuba diving team. They used specialized equipment invented by an SFFD battalion chief to fight fires under the waterfront piers, the only such equipment in the U.S. Most of his career was in downtown San Francisco at Engine 4. Al had the position of San Francisco fire inspector, for which he was highly honored. Al ended his SFFD career as the deputy fire marshal at the San Francisco International Airport.
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Retired SF Firefighter Obituary: John "Jack" Gregory Neil
John "Jack" Gregory Neil, age 84, passed away on March 9, 2021. He was born August 17, 1936 in Spokane, Washington to the late Ira and Mildred Neil. Jack was one of eight siblings who grew up in Spokane, then San Francisco, where he graduated from Saint Ignatius High School in 1955. He served in the United States Air Force from 1956 to 1960, stationed in England. Jack was married in San Francisco in 1962 and was blessed with three boys. The family moved to Novato in 1965. Jack joined the San Francisco Fire Department, where he proudly served for 27 years as a Firefighter, Chief's Operator, and Lieutenant. Bravery and unselfishness came natural to Jack, who never hesitated to risk his own life to save lives of strangers, as he protected his fellow firefighters. Back at the firehouse, he elevated his cooking skills while dreaming up the next practical joke. Later, Jack played an important role in developing San Francisco's Earthquake Preparedness Program.
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Remembering Our Fallen Brothers & Sisters |
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William Downing (Ret.)
Deceased: 7-3-21
Rank: H-20
George Bullwinkel (Ret.)
Deceased: 6-12-21
Rank: H-2
Peter Cornyn (Ret.)
Deceased: 6-9-21
Rank: H-30
Christopher Yock (Active)
Deceased: 6-8-21
Rank: H-2
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Al Wirdzek (Ret.)
Deceased: 6-7-21
Rank: H-4
William McCarthy (Ret.)
Deceased: 5-30-21
Rank: H-2
James Bogue (Ret.)
Deceased: 5-25-21
Rank: H-2
Hugh Smith (Ret.)
Deceased: 5-23-21
Rank: H-2
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Seth Bertram (Ret.)
Deceased: 5-5-21
Rank: H-2
Stephen Smith (Ret.)
Deceased: 5-1-21
Rank: H-30
Steven Brantley (Active)
Deceased: 5-1-21
Rank: H-3
Charles Carli (Ret.)
Deceased: 4-21-21
Rank: H-50
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About Local 798
Local 798 is the labor organization of the proud men and women that serve as Firefighters and emergency medical responders protecting San Francisco. The members of the San Francisco Fire Department rely on Local 798 to focus on the wellbeing and safety of those that protect the lives of others. For more information, visit www.sffdlocal798.org.
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