Firefighters

The Clinician Awareness Program, which was taught recently at North Collier Fire & Rescue, teaches mental health clinicians about the fire service so they can better serve firefighters seeking counseling.

A long running effort to permanently boost pay for thousands of federal wildland firefighters is finally gaining traction in Congress but fire managers warn it could be too little too late.

A statewide firefighters union has joined the Florida Police Benevolent Association in challenging the way a state agency is carrying out a new law that placed additional restrictions on public-employee unions.

Certain types of cancer occur more frequently in firefighters than in the general population, according to CDC research. A training program can help local firefighters.

The Sandy Fire in the southeastern portion of the Big Cypress National Preserve has grown over 11,000 acres and fire officials have activated a second phase of evacuation plans for those living within the affected area.The wildfire began May 1 as a 50-acre blaze in an area of the preserve between I-75 to then north and U.S. 41 to the south.

Firefighters worked through the night Tuesday on the 10,551-acre wildfire growing in the Big Cypress National Preserve east of Naples, a tactic that appears to be working as control of the Sandy Wildfire rose from 5% to 15%.

The fire department said the site will allow for multi-company scenarios while keeping crews inside the district.

The fire was reported around 2 a.m. Thursday and put out by firefighters from the Iona McGregor Fire District and surrounding departments.

If you see a huge plume of smoke rising into the sky this time of year in Florida, there is a good chance it’s an under-control wildland burn that has little chance of spreading as opposed to a raging wildfire heading your way. Wildland management agencies take advantage of the early part of the dry season in Florida to purposely burn smaller tracts of land. Called “prescribed burns,” the fires are lit and managed by trained woodland firefighters to help manage the woods as well as avoid larger, out-of-control wildfires later on. Prescribed fires, also called controlled burns, restore overall environmental health to ecosystems that rely on the burn-and-regrow cycle to thrive. Fire managers first have to write out a follow a safety plan, or prescription, for each burn.

A bill to give better benefits to firefighters with cancer passed a threshold this week: A majority of member of the Florida House of Representatives...