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Fire
The Austin Firefighters Association is seeking more attention to the safety issues facing its membership, which were discussed in part last week during City Council budget sessions. The AFA had planned to hold a press conference Monday to publicize issues…
Throughout her time on the dais, District 10 City Council Member Alison Alter has stressed the need for the city to understand and prepare to fight wildfires in the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, which is the area between unoccupied land…
At last week’s meeting of City Council’s Audit and Finance Committee, chair Alison Alter thanked city staff for their work over the past several years to ensure a sound pension system for all three sets of city retirees – police,…
Ahead of national Wildfire Community Preparedness Day on May 4, the Public Safety Commission this week heard an update on how Austin is faring with its own community readiness efforts. The good news is that Austin leads the state in…
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City Council on Thursday approved negotiation and execution of a contract for what Austin Energy describes as a powerful new tool to aid the utility in wildfire detection and response. The utility says it will use Pano AI technology to…
The public may not have noticed, but Austin-Travis County had 963 different brush and grass fire alarms in September, Assistant Fire Chief Andre de la Reza told members of the city’s Public Safety Commission on Monday. The department was able…
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After years of heated negotiations, and about a year without a contract in place, Austin firefighters finally have an agreement with the city in place. The contract, which is effective immediately, comes from an three-member arbitration panel. Unlike a normal…
Austin Firefighters Association President Bob Nicks has made no secret of how angry he is with city negotiators. The union and those negotiators could not reach an agreement on a labor contract, and the matter must now be decided at…
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Lee esta historia en español Dry grass, wind and relatively low humidity mean a fire can spread easily and be difficult to control. All it takes is a spark from a metal lawnmower blade hitting a rock, a loose chain…
In late July, City Council Member Mackenzie Kelly wrote a memo pointing out that 20 trucks within the Austin Fire Department’s fleet “are currently lacking functioning air conditioning systems.” Not only is that a risk for firefighters, she wrote, but…
In a memo dated June 12, Austin Fire Chief Joel Baker gave Mayor Kirk Watson and City Council his proposed road map for reducing overtime expenditures in the department, and it involves a bigger budget and more firefighters. Baker was…
City Council voted this week to start the process of increasing minimum fire safety standards at pet boarding facilities. Item 42 on Thursday’s agenda initiates a set of amendments to the Land Development Code to “provide minimum fire safety standards…
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