An autonomous flying ambulance has successfully completed its first solo test flight, offering a potential solution for challenging search and rescue missions. Completing such missions in rough terrain or combat zones can be tricky, with helicopters currently offering the best transportation option in most cases.

After Hurricane Katrina hammered the southeastern United States in 2005 and turned New Orleans into a vast, disaster area, the city of roughly 460,000 was largely dysfunctional. Once out of the threatened area, the next priority was treating the sick, wounded and injured.

As a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter pilot, Chris Kluckhuhn had been haunted for more than a decade by what he and other responders couldn’t do immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City.

“What if there had been a way to rescue some of the people trapped in the Twin Towers?” said the retired lieutenant commander and founder of the Plymouth emergency-services firm Avwatch.

A firefighter who responded to a report of a gas leak Tuesday morning was killed in a house explosion shortly after authorities discovered what appeared to be a drug lab.

The Fire Department of New York confirmed the firefighter's death shortly after the Bronx explosion.

The mayor's office had tweeted that the mayor and fire commissioner were at the hospital.

Gov. Robert Bentley issued an executive order Thursday declaring a state of emergency in Alabama over concerns about fuel shortages in the wake of a gasoline pipeline spill that released about 250,000 gallons of gasoline south of Birmingham and shut down a major pipeline connecting refineries in Houston with the rest of the country.

Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal issued a similar executive order for his state on Tuesday.

The pipeline operator, Colonial Pipeline, released the following information Thursday afternoon: