chicagoareafire.com

Keeping track of Chicago area fire departments

Archive for September, 2025

Note to readers – site responsiveness (or the lack there of)

Sep 2

Posted by Admin in Site News | 4 Comments

Apologies that the site has been running like shit. Lots of downtime and slow speeds.

Web hosting is not inexpensive and the site generates no revenue.

We inquired with the hosting company and received the following techno jargon:

We’ve reviewed the recent server logs for the user account “psvjbuqk”, and found multiple fault alerts related to Entry Processes, CPUNPROC. These faults are triggered primarily by several concurrent lsphp processes executing the index.php file of the site, which points to high or inefficient PHP execution load. Please check the screenshot below for your reference.

Please be informed that since you are using a shared hosting plan, the resources are limited. In a CloudLinux-based shared hosting environment, once a website account reaches its limit of set resources, the site will begin to slow down. The website account consumes too many resources and will stop working until resource usage returns to normal.

Also, we analyzed the AWStats results and identified many hits to the websites. Upon checking, we found many bot hits from Google Bot, Bing Bot, etc. This can start using too many resources for your website. To help avoid this, you can block and disable the bots.

You can limit bots from crawling your site by creating a robots.txt file in your website’s root directory.

Also, we suggest preventing bot connections to your website with the help of your developer and optimising your website themes/plugins to limit resource usage. Please note that the most accessed URL is “xmlrpc.php,” and you need to disable that with the help of a developer. You should disable xmlrpc.php on your WordPress site because it introduces security vulnerabilities and can be the target of attacks. Please check the screenshot below for your reference.

You can disable xmlrpc.php via .htaccess.

We have noticed multiple connections from the IPs below to the website. Please refer to the snippet below. I have temporarily blocked these IPs in your cPanel.

We also recommend working with your developer to prevent bot connections and optimize your website’s themes and plugins to reduce resource usage.
Thank you!

So, we’ll try to seek out some assistance in an effort to implement as many of their recommendations as possible, but our technical savvy is limited. Thanks for your patience.

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Milwaukee Fire Department is turning 150 years old

Sep 1

Posted by Admin in Fire Department History, Fire Department News | 2 Comments

Hello everybody. The MFD will host a 150th anniversary event at HENRY MAIER FESTIVAL GROUNDS. Should be a fun and interesting event.
#chicagoareafire.com; #MilwaukeeFD; #history; #Anniversary;
thanks Crabby
 
Excerpts from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The Milwaukee Fire Department turns 150 years old on Jan. 1. Its history spans from the days of “bucket brigades” to modern innovations in firefighting equipment and life-saving techniques.

The department’s roots date before 1875 to Milwaukee’s earliest days as a village in the 1830s. Local firefighter historians shared their insights on some of the most consequential moments over that time.

Milwaukee’s first organized firefighting crew was a volunteer effort that began in 1837, with equipment and firehouses funded by donors or the volunteers themselves, according to a historic preservation report.

“Grateful storekeepers and hotel managers would frequently feed the volunteers during bouts of fire fighting. Members were also expected to help quiet civil disturbances when called upon,” the report said.

Those first volunteers used an old wagon with buckets and ladders on it, said Jim Ley, a retired deputy fire chief who is curator of the Milwaukee Fire Department’s museum and historical society.

By 1861, a more formalized department was created where firefighters would hold regular daytime jobs but remain on standby for emergencies. That came around the same time as the onset of steam engines, which required trained staff to operate, Ley said.

Then, on Jan. 1, 1875, a full-time, paid fire department was created. The tools firefighters used over the years have evolved “leaps and bounds” since then, Rode said: from horses pulling steam engines to the first motorized vehicles in the 1910s. Today’s fire engines carry 500 gallons of water on the truck and can pump 1,500 gallons per minute.

Click HERE for an extensive historical photo gallery

 

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