Evacuation

A smoky fire in the elevator of the Carroll County Board of Education headquarters at 125 N. Court St. in Westminster yesterday forced the brief evacuation of nearly 200 employees -- just as they had started to partake in an end-of-the-year ice cream social.The evacuation, which started at 2 p.m., lasted 15 minutes as firefighters worked to extinguish a fire that burned up the motor of the three-story building's only elevator.Undeterred, two employees carried the table of homemade ice cream and all the confectionery trimmings for sundaes and banana splits into the parking lot."

New gas leaks yesterday forced the third evacuation of Crofton Middle School this week, while concerns about how the first evacuation was handled have top administrators calling for a systemwide re-education on how to get children out of a building in an emergency.Pupils were evacuated shortly before 9 a.m. yesterday after Principal Richard Berzinski and a maintenance inspector checking the boiler room in the rear of the school detected an odor, said Chief John Scholz, spokesman for county EMS/Fire/Rescue.

Fire officials are unhappy about the way administrators handled an evacuation Tuesday at Crofton Middle School when the building filled with natural gas and have opened an investigation.Principal Richard Berzinski said he thought "things were handled the way it should have been handled," but investigators have called into question the speed and the manner in which he acted. Children were inside the school when the first fire units arrived.School officials also discovered that lights on the fire alarms intended to warn deaf pupils of danger did not work.

LAST WEEK'S confused evacuation at Crofton Middle School should never be repeated. When the potential exists for a real hazard or emergency -- in this case a gas leak -- administrators and teachers need to clear buildings as quickly and safely as possible. The Anne Arundel County school system and EMS/Fire/Rescue department have begun investigating the incident and most likely will offer constructive suggestions to ensure such confusion doesn't recur.When a strange odor was detected near the gymnasium a week ago, Principal Richard Berzinski immediately notified the proper authorities.

For the second time in three weeks, passengers carrying harmless souvenir grenades in their luggage shut down part of Baltimore-Washington International Airport yesterday morning, delaying departing flights and forcing the evacuation of about 300 passengers.The first grenade turned up just after 7 a.m. at the security entrance to Pier C, in a carry-on bag of a U.S. Air Force lieutenant. Its discovery resulted in the evacuation of about 250 passengers from the pier's 16 gates. The State Fire Marshal's bomb squad moved in to investigate, while Southwest and Northwest airlines moved planes to Piers B and D.A half-hour later, a second grenade turned up at the entrance to Pier A, in the carry-on bag of a soldier in Thailand's armed forces.

OCEAN CITY -- Emergency management officials say Maryland's resort city should receive only a glancing blow from Hurricane Bonnie, as the first major storm of the season apparently will spare both property owners and beach-goers.Forecasters from the National Weather Service say the storm will arrive tonight, pass within 150 miles of the coast early tomorrow morning and bring sustained winds of 50 mph and higher gusts.Heavy rains and wind could bring flooding in some low-lying areas and some property damage is likely, officials say. But more than 200,000 visitors will be allowed to finish their late-summer vacations.

AIRPORT OFFICIALS, airline personnel, police and emergency crews calmly and effectively handled Thursday evening's evacuation of a portion of Baltimore-Washington International Airport after several passengers were overcome by noxious fumes.With more than 1,500 passengers missing dozens of domestic and several international flights, the ingredients for a chaotic and dangerous situation at BWI were present. It never developed.As soon as passengers waiting at Gate D-24 experienced problems due to the fumes around 6 p.m. -- itchy and watery eyes, wheezing and coughing -- Maryland Transportation Police cleared the pier in a matter of minutes.

A series of explosions and dark plumes of smoke failed to trigger fire alarms at Baltimore's World Trade Center yesterday, slowing the evacuation of about 700 people who were not immediately warned of the emergency.Electricians were busy working on repairs last night and could not say if the state-owned office building that towers over the Inner Harbor and houses international trade and shipping companies could reopen today. Power had not been restored as of last night.A weekend closure would prevent tourists from reaching the Top of the World observation floor that offers a panoramic view of the city and its waterways from 29 stories above the ground.

A gas leak in the 4200 block of Montgomery Road in Ellicott City closed the road between Long Gate Parkway and U.S. 29 for about three hours yesterday morning, prompting the evacuation of about 10 people from the area.An underground gas line was hit at a residence when employees of Driggs Corp. of Capitol Heights were grading the ground in that area, said Melody Kestenbaum, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.Ten people at the YMCA in the 4300 block of Montgomery Road were evacuated, she said.

Union officials complained yesterday of inadequate evacuation procedures at Bethlehem Steel's Sparrows Point complex, where fumes from a waste-oil recovery operation sent about 40 workers to area hospitals Tuesday night.Len R. Shindele, a grievance coordinator at United Steelworkers of America Local 2609, said he plans to send the complaint today to the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health agency."There is no alarm system to warn workers or a system to evacuate people in this type of situation," he said.

GALVESTON COUNTY, Texas - Rescue crews fanned out across the flooded Gulf Coast yesterday, searching for tens of thousands of Texans who ignored mandatory evacuation orders just before Hurricane Ike crashed ashore in the night with howling winds and a powerful tidal surge. Ike made landfall with 110 mph winds about 2 a.m. yesterday near the barrier island of Galveston, then blew through Houston, flooding streets, downing power lines and smashing the windows of downtown skyscrapers. More than 3 million people were left without power by the 500-mile-wide storm, and utilities warned that it could be days or weeks before electricity is restored.

NEW ORLEANS - By universal consensus, this time New Orleans got it right. Officials successfully emptied the city ahead of Hurricane Gustav, in stark contrast to the nearly 100,000 residents they left behind when Hurricane Katrina struck three years ago. And the newly fortified levees protecting the city held fast against the onrushing storm surge, unlike during Katrina when the floodwalls failed and 80 percent of the city was inundated. That's the good news. But it could also be the bad news.

Several residents in the 1900 block of Aliceanna St. in Fells Point were evacuated from their homes for several hours last night while a Fire Department hazardous-materials team neutralized a potentially explosive chemical inside a business, a department spokesman said. There were no injuries. Traffic was detoured from the scene. About 8:30 p.m., an employee of Powell Labs Limited noticed a small glass vial containing dry picric acid, a poisonous and explosive yellow crystalline solid used to etch stainless steel, that had been sitting on a shelf for a long time, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, the spokesman.

An ammonia leak at an old icehouse in West Baltimore caused an evacuation near the building that suffered an extensive fire in 2004. Homes in the 500 block of N. Pulaski St., less than a block east of the Baltimore American Ice Co. in the 2100 block of W. Franklin St., were evacuated because of the strong odor of ammonia, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. The 15 evacuees were put on warm MTA buses, Cartwright said. One person complained of breathing problems but refused hospital treatment.

About 20 female residents of a building at the Rosewood Center in Owings Mills were displaced last night after a single-alarm fire, apparently intentionally set by a developmentally disabled resident, Baltimore County fire officials said. No one was injured, and all of the women were evacuated to a nearby building, said Baltimore County Fire Division Chief Michael Robinson. The fire was reported about 8:45 p.m. after alarms went off, he said. It destroyed the room of the woman who is thought to have started the fire and caused smoke damage elsewhere in the building, he said.

A wind-whipped firestorm destroyed more than 700 homes and businesses in Southern California yesterday, the second day of its onslaught, and more than half a million people in San Diego County were told to evacuate their homes. Gale-force winds turned hillside canyons into giant blowtorches from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border. Though the worst damage was around San Diego and Lake Arrowhead, fires threatened Malibu, parts of Orange and Ventura counties and the Agua Dulce area near Santa Clarita.

Medical and security information continuously scrolls across a flat screen television monitor, offering messages like "Car bombing, possible deceased." Some 45 call center employees handle 300 to 500 calls every day, around the clock. Their cubicle name tags indicate what languages the "assistance coordinators" speak - among them, 15 languages are available. Alphonse Ndour is fluent in French and Wolof, a West African language out of his native Senegal. The 365-day operation in Towson is the nerve center behind a travelers' assistance and insurance company that provides security and political evacuation to corporate and government workers overseas.

A Dulaney High School student was arrested yesterday after the discovery of a bottle containing chemicals prompted an evacuation of the Cockeysville school, county police said. The student, who had not been charged by yesterday evening, was questioned after a teacher found the bottle in a second-floor boys bathroom - the second instance in nine days that a container filled with a suspicious liquid forced students from a Baltimore County school. The teacher who found the bottle yesterday at Dulaney High was taken to Greater Baltimore Medical Center after being overcome by fumes with "an odor of chlorine," county police spokesman Bill Toohey said.

Two Southwest Airlines concourses at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport were evacuated and shut down yesterday morning after a loaded handgun was detected in a passenger's carry-on luggage. Many passengers in Concourses A and B were required to go through a second round of screening after the man carrying the bag walked away from his luggage and disappeared into the gate area. "I don't think it was a question of letting him go," said BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean.

TYRE, Lebanon -- The Israeli orders spread at dawn yesterday, by radio, leaflet and menacing cell-phone text messages: All civilians south of the Litani River should clear out immediately or risk death. Panicked by violence and the evacuation order, families piled into cars and poured north on one-lane dirt roads and bomb-pocked highways. Smoke boiled into the sky as bombs rumbled in the hills. Israeli jets flew overhead. As evacuating Lebanese sped past abandoned cars, they glimpsed corpses inside.