A partially constructed townhouse in Owings Mills collapsed yesterday morning in heavy winds, sending a carpenter to the hospital with a scrape on his face.
The carpenter, whose name was not known to other workers at the site or to the Baltimore County Fire Department, was driven to a hospital by a colleague before the Fire Department arrived.
He was one of two workers in the three-story townhouse in the Crosswell Farms development when it collapsed shortly after 11 a.m. Several other workers left the building just before the collapse.
"Everybody's accounted for," said Battalion Chief Wayne Trump, one of about 30 firefighters at the scene. "Somebody left the scene with a minor facial abrasion."
The unfinished townhouse in the 10000 block of Will Painter Road had been framed but the walls were being added when it fell, and workers said they had been watchful all morning because of strong winds.
The National Weather Service recorded frequent gusts of more than 40 mph in the area, said meteorologist Dewey Walston.
"We could hear the wood cracking," said Perry Spar of Spar Construction Services.
His company, which had about a half-dozen workers at the site, was one of 15 or so working on the development.
The Spar workers said they were pouring concrete on the townhouse's ground floor before the collapse, and two carpenters from another company were working on the second floor.
The Spar workers said they could see the framed building swaying under wind gusts.
They had just walked out of the townhouse when it collapsed, Spar said.
One of the carpenters jumped from the second floor onto the muddy ground outside when the walls fell, and the second was briefly trapped under the walls but extricated himself, the workers said. His face was scraped, they said.
"Our tools are still under that unit," said Kevin Glenn, a Spar worker.
Pub Date: 2/26/98
