Allegations of racism in the Houston Fire Department continue to smolder as the nation casts an eye on the Gates/Crowley arrest situation. In May, African-American firefighters sued alleging "'systemic discrimination' [on promotion exams]." A few weeks ago, racist and sexist graffiti in the women's dorm was the latest in a string of incidents at Station 54. Now the embattled department is dealing with a noose at Station 41. Per Chron.com, "an NAACP vice president, said he talked to virtually everyone at Station 41 in east Houston and concluded that the noose was an unconscious mistake, albeit hurtful to the black firefighter who reported it..." However, some citizens are not satisfied with that assessment or the captain's apology. They will be demonstrating at noon today outside city hall at the "Rally Against Hate." Let us know what you think Houston. Is the training knot incident being blown out of proportion or is this just another indicator that HFD has a serious issue? Sound off in the comments or show up at city hall.
Results tagged “firedepartment”
It was your typical Friday night on the 3700 block of Main. There were bands playing at both The Continental Club and Shoeshine Charley's Big Top Lounge, The Mink was minding its own business serving drinks and Tacos-A-Go-Go were catering to their usual crowd of taco munchers when the evening started to really get hot! Hot as in flaming barrel hot. Houstonist Flickr photo contributor and resident photographer for The Continental Club, Jay Lee caught this event as it happened and has full details on his blog.
Good morning, Houston. If you're hoping that the United States will one day be free of its dependence on foreign natural gas — and we're sure at least one of you is — this isn't your lucky day: According to a report from the Energy Forum at Rice University's Baker Institute, there's no end in sight to our use of imported gas. Natural gas accounted for 22 percent of total primary energy use in...
Good morning, Houston. In these days of near-$3 gas, there's one group of drivers who aren't so worried: hypermilers, who use certain techniques to squeeze every possible M out of their MPG. Hypermiling involves a few pretty simple changes in the way you drive, including coasting, accelerating slowly from stops and the skillful use of cruise control. Used correctly, hypermiling can increase your car's fuel efficiency by 30 percent or more — so why...
Banner week for SFist as the site's new editor introduced himself -- hooray for Brock! While the NY Times weighed in on SF's mayoral race, only SFist had the (insert tongue firmly into cheek) hard-hitting latest on candidate/activist Josh Wolf. Coverage of a protest vs. gentrification spawned a fantastic debate amongst SFist's readers. Finally, from the sublime to the ridiculous: video of a man that confused a Board of Supes meeting with "open mic...
Last week METRO riders felt a bit unrequited as they Missed Connections with fellow commuters. That beats us. We missed connected once on METRO and got to stand on the shoulder of Hempstead for an hour.
Good morning, Houston. According to a government report released yesterday, the national average price for a gallon of gas rose to $2.876 last week, up 7.4 cents over last week. Bad news, eh? But here's something good: A gallon of gas is, in general, a lot cheaper than that in Houston. Not that it's cheap or anything — according to reports, it'll cost you anywhere from $2.59 to $2.99 here. Looks like we might...
So, have you heard the one about the guy who went chasing his prized pet bird, got stuck 60 feet up in a pine tree and had to be rescued by a Coast Guard helicopter? Good story — and it happened right here. The bird was Geronimo, an Umbrella Cockatoo; the tree was in Porter; and the man was William Hart, a roofer. Hart said Geronimo flew out the window of his house around 4...
Good morning, Houston. Looks like the Legislature could be gearing up for a debate of Biblical proportions: state Rep. Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) has proposed a bill that would require public high schools to offer courses on the Old and New Testaments. Chisum said the courses, which would be electives, would focus on history and literature, bt critics worry that teachers' religious beliefs could seep into the classes and that certain historical perspectives — Catholic...
There's a lot of news from Wednesday's northeast Houston office building fire — but, at this point, there seem to be more questions than answers. Among those leading the questioning is KTRK's Wayne Dolcefino, who didn't have any luck getting information from the city about fire department response times. We imagine that'll come out eventually, but Dolcefino also raises questions about the building's safety systems — and the answers are a grim reminder of changing Houston fire codes.
Thousands of people have gotten citations from the city's red-light camera system since it went online back in September — so you'd expect that some of them would be public employees driving public vehicles, right? Right. According to the Chronicle, more than 100 government and school vehicles have been tagged running red lights, resulting in some $8,000 in fines. The Chronicle got the information under the Texas Public Information Act; though the 100 citations are a very tiny fraction of the 34,000 issued so far, they're kind of troublesome. "Anytime anyone runs a red light, we have a concern about that," HISD spokesman Terry Abbott said (the school district has gotten five camera citations). "It's the same as speeding or anything else. We have policies in place to discipline drivers who don't follow the law."
A Wharton County freelance photographer was recently indicted for something he’s been doing for many years – snapping photos.. It seems what got photographer Elmer Cavender in heaps of trouble this time were his pictures he took for the Wharton Volunteer Fire Department of a crime scene where Needville ISD Police Chief Ernie Mendoza was killed. He later sold those photos to a local newspaper, a common practice in the industry.
Last night in northwest Houston, a car a car hit a natural gas pipeline meter station, causing the line to explode — and the people involved in the accident walked away uninjured. And we thought that kind of thing only happened in the movies. The accident happened near Kuykendahl and FM 1960 at about 7:15 p.m. Police said two cars collided, which caused one to flip over a fence and crash into the meter station....
Holiday shopping came to a screeching halt yesterday evening at Memorial City when an ammonia leak forced shoppers to drop their packages and flee the mall. It happened around 6 p.m. when ammonia fumes escaped from a maintenance room near the mall's ice rink (the ammonia is used to make the ice); an alarm was sounded and parts of the building was evacuated. Fortunately, it turned out to be no big deal:
One of those Houston institutions Houstonist never got around to visiting burned this weekend: The Great Caruso, the 32-year-old westside dinner theater, was pretty much destroyed by flames Sunday morning. It happened when the restaurant was empty, which raised the suspicions of HFD investigators: The source of Sunday morning's fire is still unclear. The building was empty, which clearly raises more than a few red flags for the Houston Fire Department's arson unit. "When you...
Houstonist hasn't heard much from former TSU President Priscilla Slade in a couple of months, and we were beginning to worry that it might be a long time before we got to enjoy another story of public officials going on taxpayer-funded spending sprees. But it turns out we don't have to wait that long after all: According to KHOU, folks associated with the New Caney Fire District had a good, old-fashioned spend-a-thon — on the public's dime.
Yes, it's Halloween today — but that doesn't mean trickery wasn't afoot yesterday, too. Take, for example, the case of a car battery that masqueraded as a ... uh ... a ... well, something on the Gulf Freeway early in the afternoon rush hour: What turned out to be a car battery in the Gulf Freeway caused a brief shutdown of all southbound lanes at Scott during today's afternoon rush. The lanes were closed from...
Ah, the (triumphant?) return of Fun for a Hamilton. We could tell you a horror story about why your favorite ten dollar bill has been missing from your lives lately, but merely rest assured that Hamilton's back now. (And since nobody emailed us to complain, we're not even sure you noticed he was gone). Without further ado... Friday, October 20 A production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at St. Thomas this evening updates the play...
So 17-year-old Jonathan Davis who is under arrest for making prank calls to 911 — one of which resulted in an accident that injured four firefighters in August. Yeah, looks like someone's gonna be in big trouble. Scott Clements, an arson investigator, said investigators let Davis listen to the recordings of nine prank calls; he said he made seven of them and a friend of his might have made the other two. The Aug. 31...
As a last hurrah of the summer, the genteel folks of Houston decided to come out of hiding and grace us with their sophistication and, well, grace. These must be the Houstonians eloquent and successful enough to purchase homes like the ones we feature on Saturday shelterporn. See Houston's cream of the crop in this week's Missed Connections.
Back in March, we talked about how the city was getting ready to re-bury some bones unearthed 20 years ago during construction at the HFD complex off Houston Avenue and Dart Street. The fire department office/training facility was built in the 1960s on top of the old City Cemetery, where Houstonians of all stripes (including quite a few Confederate soldiers) were buried between about 1840 and 1870. UH anthropologist Ken Brown, who had criticized the city for continuing to dig after the bones were found, took the remains to his lab to study them. What happened for the next 20 years isn't clear: The city claims Brown hung onto the bones, but Brown says he asked the city to re-bury them and nothing ever happened. Whatever the case, the bones were forgotten until City Councilwoman Ada Edwards heard about them and led a push to have them buried again.
HPD and the fire department sent HazMat crews to the scene, as well as six Metro busses, which are there to provide an airconditioned mobile triage unit.
Continuing in the tradition of reporting on flaming trash cans, KPRC made the most of a slow news day Tuesday by covering a burning tire downtown. No, really — they say it was one tire. Here's the story:
Crews are still working to contain an oil spill in Nassau Bay after a tugboat sank there last night. The tug, owned by Payne Brothers Inc., sank while it was connected to a work barge and leaked about 75 gallons of waste oil into the bay, which is near Clear Lake. The leak continued this morning. Response crews from the Coast Guard, Harris County Pollution Control, Nassau Bay Volunteer Fire Department, Kemah Fire Department and...
So we hear stories from time to time about identity theft — you know, people getting hold of your credit card numbers from the Internet or maybe sifting through your trash to steal bank account info. But recently, it was much easier to steal people's personal information — old Houston Community College student records, complete with Social Security numbers, were being sold on the street. It seems the records came from a warehouse HCC sold a few years ago, but left paperwork in.
You've probably heard the stories about a Houston hospital that was built on top of an old cemetery — but you might not know the stories were actually true, and that a fire department facility also stands on top of the dead folks. The site is off Elder Street just northwest of downtown; Jeff Davis Hospital was built there in 1924 over the City Cemetery, which was used between 1840 and around 1900. In the 1960s, HFD built an office/training complex next door to the old hospital. The old cemetery last came up — no pun intended — in 1986, when workers were digging a utility trench at the fire department property and unearthed the remains of 27 people.
Remember the good ol' days when brothers used to fight over girls, basketball stats and their father's affection? In this day and age, two brothers are perhaps the first Texas siblings to take their rivalry to the polls in the Conroe race for city council. Jay Ross Martin, 57, and Guy Martin, 54, will face each other on the city ballot after Guy decided to run against his brother, the incumbent, for what he...
Steve Sanguedolce, chief of the Magnolia Volunteer Fire Department, resigned amid accusations he used department payroll funds to pay other firefighters to step in for him at the Houston Fire Department.
The Chronicle reports this morning that the owner of an East End boarding house that burned yesterday, killing a tenant, had a suspicious fatal fire at another of his properties last year. The boarding house in the 200 block of Delmar caught fire about 3:15 a.m. Monday; tenants said smoke alarms woke them up and they heard screams as they escaped the burning building. Firefighters found the victim's body among the debris after putting the fire out, but his or her identty hasn't been released yet. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
Just when Houstonist was starting to think think the day's news was all going to be boring, we ran across a story that proved us very, very wrong: the tale of Kenneth Paul Engle III, who took a joy ride in a Pasadena fire truck. No, Engle isn't a firefighter or affiliated with the Pasadena fire department in any way — and what's more, he can't remember anything about driving the truck. Engle, 28, said...