Our Blog

Public Housing Often Fails to Meet Modern Fire Safety Standards Many older public housing apartment buildings, homeless shelters lack smoke detectors and fire sprinklers In a previous post, we reviewed the recent tragic deaths of 6 people in a Las Vegas hotel that had been converted to an apartment building. In that post we noted that early reports suggested the building, which is privately owned, did not have an operating fire sprinkler system and that smoke detectors were either not…

No matter the time of year, different parts of the nation are hit with major storms. Be they monster snowstorms in the winter, hurricanes in the summer and fall, tornadoes starting the spring, and flooding the year around, catastrophic storms take out power and wreak havoc wherever they strike. Understandably, people facing the aftermath of these storms, and a lack of power, turn to portable generators to maintain some semblance of life until utility companies restore services. While portable generators…

Chad Elgert, 35, a North Sioux City Speedy Rooter sewer company employee, remains in critical condition at a local hospital after he tried to rescue another worker in the same sewer. Elgert had been called to fix a clogged sewer in a one-block stretch of Souix City, IA recently when his co-worker, Robert Thompson, 54, fell into unconscious from the gasses in the sewer. Elgert then descended into the manhole to try to rescue Thompson, but he was also overtaken…