Archive for March 3rd, 2016

House fire in Morris, 3-1-16

This from Dave Weaver:

3/1/16 MORRIS – Full Still house fire w/additional tenders at 2860 N. Dwight Rd. – Video by Dave Weaver/RM911

Tags: , , , ,

MVA with truck fire on I94; Deerfield-Bannockburn FPD, 3-3-16

This from Tim Olk:

Deerfield-Bannockbun firefighters were called to the Tri-State Tollway this afternoon (3/3/16) for a crash at the 23.5 mm southbound. Units arrived to find a tractor-trailer that had rolled over after colliding with a car. The truck and an SUV were in flames against the center median. Lincolnshire-Riverwoods responded to assist as well as Crash Truck 39 from Prospect Heights.

tractor-trailer burning after crash

Tim Olk photo

ARFF on highway with truck fire

Tim Olk photo

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sauk Village FD orders new engine

From the Interstate Emergency Vehicles Facebook page:

We thank the Sauk Village Fire Department for their new apparatus purchase. A 2016 SMEAL Sirius chassis / UST 2,000-gallon pumper/ tanker. Stainless steel body and a two-year bumper to bumper warranty, standard at SMEAL & UST. Congratulations to Kevin Lueder for making the sale.— at Interstate Emergency Vehicles.

mechanical drawing of new fire engine

New engine for Sauk Vilage

Tags: , ,

Hackers targeting fire departments

Excerpts from wtop.com:

The Department of Homeland Security and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center are warning that cyberattacks against law enforcement, fire departments, and other emergency services have become commonplace and are likely to increase in frequency.

An intelligence assessment reads, “cyber targeting of the Emergency Services Sector (ESS) will likely increase as systems and networks become more interconnected and the ESS becomes more dependent on information technology for daily operations.”

The assessment said the unified nature of the systems creates more targets for hackers, and that vulnerable systems include call-center communications-management software, closed-circuit TV camera systems, interactive voice response systems, and emergency alert systems — particularly wireless emergency alert systems.

Hacking emergency systems is not a new phenomenon. Similar incidents date back more than four years. The most notorious took place in February 2013.

KRTV television viewers in North Central Montana heard the familiar emergency alert tones and saw the usual accompanying messages scroll across their screens, but what they heard next triggered a wave of panic in the first-responder emergency services community.

“Civil authorities in your area have reported that the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living. Follow the messages on screen that will be updated as information become available. Do not attempt to approach or apprehend these bodies as they are considered extremely dangerous,” was the message.

Similar messages were later broadcast on WMNU-TV and WBUP-TV, in the upper Michigan Peninsula area. Their systems, along with those in California, New Mexico and Utah, were hacked in the same manner: The hacker remotely logged in over the internet and manipulated the system because of firmware vulnerability in those systems.

Authorities stopped the perpetrator overseas. But the attacks have continued.

 Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has detected a pattern suggesting they will become more frequent. The DHS assessment says “approximately 600 critical government phone systems nationwide, including 200 public-safety answering points (PSAPs) were hit by telephony denial of service (TDoS) attacks.”
The next year police were targeted. A city in Southern California and several local public-safety agencies were hit by ransomware in June 2014; 100 computers and 10 servers were affected. In May 2015, a Nevada county sheriff’s department and a Wisconsin police department were victims of a ransomware attack that encrypted both departments’ shared folders.

Bracing for an increase in attacks, DHS has offered a list of best practices for first responders and emergency system operators to follow to avoid vulnerabilities.

• Perform regular backups of all critical information to limit the impact of data or system loss and to help expedite the recovery process. Ideally, this data should be kept on a separate device, and backups should be stored offline.
• Maintain up-to-date anti-virus software, and keep operating systems and software up-to-date with the latest patches.
• Be cautious about all emails received, including those purported to be from “trusted entities,” and be careful when opening links within those messages.
• Do not input personal information or login credentials in pop-up windows or links within an email, and do not open attachments or click on links in unsolicited emails — access the links by navigating to the organization’s website directly.
• Look for uniform resource locaters that do not match a legitimate site, but appear to be associated with the site through small spelling variations or different domain names (.com vice .net).
• Be wary of downloading files from unknown senders. Malicious code can be embedded in commonly emailed files, such as .doc, .pdf, .exe, and .zip; and be particularly cautious of double file extensions (evil.pdf.exe).
• Only download software from trusted sites, and enable the feature to scan email attachments before downloading and saving them to a system or network.

Tags:

Four historic extra alarm fires ravage Chicago from 11/12/64 – 11/14/64

This from Steve Redick:

November 1964 had a 3 day period that was one of the busiest ever in the recent history of the city of Chicago. It was the subject of a TV news special. view it here

I have some news clippings of two of the massive fires.

  • The Goldblatts warehouse (5-11 and 7 Specials)  4000 S Kedzie
  • The 5-11 at 18th & Clark
  • The 5-11 2455 S. Michigan Avenue

Steve

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire at a vacate Goldblatts warehouse

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire at a vacate Goldblatts warehouse

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from an historic fire that destroyed mcCormick Place in Chicago on February 13, 1971

Warren Redick collection

News cliNews clipping from a historic Chicago firepping from an historic fire that destroyed mcCormick Place in Chicago on February 13, 1971

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire

Warren Redick collection

News clipping from a historic Chicago fire

Warren Redick collection

Screen Shot 2016-02-28 at 1.32.35 PM

 

 

Tags: , , , ,