Results tagged “bostonfiredepartment”

-- A Somerville man was stabbed repeatedly outside of the CVS on JFK Street in Harvard Square early Saturday morning before taking a cab to the emergency room. The man described three suspects to police, who have released little information about the incident. [Cambridge Chronicle]

• With Steven Tyler recovering from his fall, Joe Perry is mad, and the future of Aerosmith is uncertain. Perry had already commented on the fall. [AP via Boston.com]

• Foxboro has a message for fans attending either of U2's Gillette Stadium concert dates on Sunday and Monday: Don't arrive too early. [Attleboro Sun Chronicle]

The city of Boston and the men who fill the ranks of the Boston Fire Department simply can't get along. Contract disputes have long since gone nuclear and now any controversy turns into a five-alarm blaze of rhetoric and posturing perfectly designed for the city's competitive media outlets.

• Massachusetts has the second-lowest obesity rate in the nation at 21.2%, which still seems too high. [WCVB]

• Boston firefighters are defying Boston Fire Department orders to volunteer to staff three stations. [Boston Herald]

Boston can boast about yet another important achievement: spending the most money per capita on firefighting and emergency medical services. We spend $452 per resident annually, far more than second-place San Francisco's $316 per resident. Unions are being blamed in part for the expense of firefighting in the city, as are outdated divisions that track unnecessary equipment. Whatever the cause, we can't argue that the high expenditures have prevented disaster: we've lost El Pelon, seen fire trucks crash (likely due to equipment failure), and paid disability out the nose (including to bodybuilders). The BFD even lost two of their own in a terrible fire made even more awful by autopsy results indicating drug use. Basically, the BFD is a Big Fucking Disaster—and more money isn't the thing that will fix it.

-- A man suspected of being homeless was found stabbed to death in a small Dorchester park this morning. [Globe]

...including, possibly, cover-ups. The Globe reports that the medical files of three Boston jakes who had claimed career-ending injuries cannot be found by FBI agents investigating improper disability claims. Samuel Tyler, president of Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded watchdog group put it drolly, "The suspicious disappearance of the files would seem to reaffirm suspicions that some of the injuries being investigated by the US attorney may not have been legitimate."

Professional bodybuilders are no longer entitled to disability pay.

The Boston Fire Department thought they had problems with Mayor Tom Menino when they were resistant to random drug testing. Now the federal government has reason to investigate them. It appears that some firefighters have been making disability claims at higher rates by claiming that they were filling in for a supervisor, hence making more money and getting more in their pensions.

The Globe reports that an electrical fire broke out on the 12th floor of One Beacon around noon today. As of right now, two people have been sent to the hospital, and Andrew Ryan reported that one person was burned severely.

Today's Globe featured a story on the tremendous pull that police and fire unions have on city government. Roderick Fraser Jr. heads the fire department, but Local 718 Ed Kelly has his own ideas for the direction of the fire department.

Whether or not you think pot is a big deal, the fact that a Boston Firefighter was arrested for buying pot today doesn't bode well for the fire department's resistance to the mayor's desire to start random drug testing.

--Three firefighters were injured in a blaze in Weymouth. At first, officials suspected arson because the home was about to be sold, but they've since declared it accidental. [WBZ]

--News the Boston Fire Department doesn't need: An anonymous person has accused firefighters of cheating on a promotional test in November. [Boston Globe]

People are feeling jittery again. A strip mall in Ashland was evacuated earlier today – all because of a fax message to a Bank of America that included an awkward ClipArt image of a hand setting off a bomb. Turns out "the fax was sent by a marketing group for a promotion to kick off a special offer from the bank." We're not sure why marketing companies don't think before they fax. Didn't they learn...

This from WBZ: A two-alarm fire that started at about 8:20 pm shut down the Longfellow Bridge. Trains were stopped, traffic was diverted, and heavy smoke forced the Charles-MGH station to shut down. The MBTA has posted the alert on its website and offered a few terse details: "A homeless man started a fire underneath the Longfellow Bridge. As a result the Boston Fire Department has stopped all traffic. Subway Red Line service is being...