A Spirit Airlines flight from Dallas to Orlando was diverted to an airport in Jacksonville, Florida, after a battery from a passenger's item caught fire in an overhead bin, airline officials said.
Flight 259 landed safely Wednesday afternoon and taxied to the terminal, the Florida-based airline said in a statement. Several people from the flight were taken to the hospital after feeling ill.
“There was a retired fireman that jumped up and the flight crew came in and they tried putting water on it and another guy went and got a bucket because I think the fireman reached in and grabbed it and they got it put out, but it took about 20 minutes.” passenger Kerri Arakawa told FirstCoast News.
Jacksonville Fire Rescue officials said one person was taken to the hospital initially, but more people started feeling ill as time passed.
Fire Captain Eric Proswimmer told the TV station they ended up taking 10 patients to the hospital.
Updates on their conditions were not available.
“We thank our crew and guests for their quick actions to ensure the safety of everyone onboard, and we thank first responders for meeting the aircraft,” the airline said.
The airline provided refunds and vouchers to passengers, and arranged for ground transportation to Orlando.
Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot beyond its earlier estimate of $810 million to $842.4 million at the time of the drawing, making it the fifth-largest Powerball jackpot and 10th-largest U.S. lottery jackpot ever won.
A New Jersey mayor says buses of migrants bound for New York City have been stopping at the train station in his town and others in an apparent effort to evade an executive order by New York's mayor trying to regulate how and when migrants can be dropped off in the city.
The world population grew by 75 million people over the past year and on New Year's Day, it was estimated to stand at more than 8 billion people, according to figures released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Thursday.
UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow. Wisconsin-La Crosse fired Gow on Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2023, after learning Gow and his wife have been producing and appearing in pornographic videos. Gow maintains the firing violated his free speech rights.
The U.S. military is now putting independent lawyers in charge of its investigations of sexual assault and other major crimes, what Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III has called the "most important reform" to the military justice system in recent history.
A decades-old law bans Medicare from paying for weight loss drugs. Now, drugmakers and a wide-ranging bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are gearing up to push for that to change next year.
Barring a court order, in March Texas police will start being able to arrest people they suspect have entered the U.S. illegally, but increases in border crossings since a 2021 law authorizing some arrests shows the limits of that approach in the face of desperation that causes people to risk everything and travel thousands of miles to the U.S.
