Even as gender equality in most traditionally male sectors has improved, women in Santa Clara County continue to be shut out of firefighting.

Without air-refilling stations in San Jose’s highrises, firefighters say they’d have to lug metal oxygen tanks up flight after flight of stairs. 

More than 13,000 firefighters throughout the state are battling record blazes that have darkened skies and forced 100,000 evacuations.

Officials want people to avoid driving in blackout areas and to remember that powered-off traffic lights render intersections a four-way stop.

The county Board of Supervisors plan to announce the official text-to-911 launch in a press conference Wednesday morning.

A new internal accountability report describes a non-emergency call system that’s critically understaffed and woefully behind the times.

The city recently acknowledged that it was missing thousands of emergency response times when calculating how long it takes first responders from the San Jose Fire Department to arrive on scene. Robert Sapien, president of San Jose’s firefighters union, explains in an op-ed why emergency response times matter not only in life and death situations, but also when calculating the city’s budget.—Editor

The San Jose Fire Department has a pretty good idea how long it takes firefighters to get to emergencies. Well, some emergencies. SJFD officials told San Jose Inside this week that thousands of emergency calls in recent years were mistakenly left out when calculating response times. In the 2011-12 fiscal year, there were 52,400 reported calls for emergency medical or fire services, according to current department statistics. But SJFD officials now acknowledge underreporting the numbers, and the total will be “significantly higher.”