Local area fire departments lent a hand to firefighters at Travis AFB, Calif., where an eight-alarm fire Aug. 16 destroyed nearly 200 uninhabited housing units, according to an Aug. 17 base release. The fire began about 3 p.m. and continued until around 3 a.m., consuming 167 units and damaging another 11 before firefighters brought it under control. All the units were empty and marked for demolition, which Travis fire chief John Speakman said made the “job a bit easier so we could focus on preventing embers from hitting the occupied houses.” High winds kept the fire raging over 12.4 acres.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office calls for the Pentagon’s Chief Technology Officer to have budget certification authority over the military services’ research and development accounts—a move the services say would add a burdensome and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
