Feet Deep

Southbound commuters on Falls Road encountered an 8-foot-wide hole yesterday that forced traffic into a single lane. The hole, 5 feet deep, was off to the right side of the road, opposite Brightfield Road, which is 1,000 feet south of Interstate 695.This is the third time in the last six months that a hole has opened up in that area of Falls Road, leading some state highway officials to speculate that there might be a geological flaw underneath the road."As...

From a street-level view of the Snider home, with its brick front and three gables jutting from a deeply pitched roof, a first impression could easily be that of a cozy little cottage. Indeed, the 40-foot-wide home suggests compact living with all the trappings of charm. The wow factor strikes at the front door with an open interior layout extending 70 feet deep to the back of the home. Dava Snider remarks how deceiving the home is from the outside. "And all the houses are meant to have an individual feel," she said of her two-story home with basement walk-out in the Residences at Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace.

If you think a 25-percent office-vacancy rate in Howard County is scary, don't talk to Dennis Lane of Noel-Lane Commercial Real Estate Advisors.Lane says the actual rate may be as high as 35 percent because the reported rate doesn't reflect space that is empty and available but still being leased, often by companies that have become smaller or merged.Much of that space may be begging to be sublet so the original tenant can avoid losing more money on the lease, which could have months or years left on it, he says.

Like many of us, Susan Clayton wished for a home near enough to her job so that she could walk to work every day. A co-owner of the Clark Morley Salon in downtown Baltimore, she had been driving from her home several miles north of the Inner Harbor. Federal Hill and Canton were too pricey, but she kept searching. "One day while looking around, I got lost and found this neighborhood," said Clayton, a 46-year-old stylist. The neighborhood she found was Ridgely's Delight, just blocks from Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

CARROLL COUNTY's symposium on cutting school construction costs last week couldn't have occurred at a more appropriate -- or embarrassing -- time.Test borings at the 100-acre site of the planned Cranberry Station Elementary School found 50,000 cubic yards of hard rock that must be dug up, at a cost of $1 million, which will delay advertising for bids by six months.School authorities say they have no more money, and can't proceed without extra funds. The county already authorized full funding of the $7 million project, using the higher local piggyback income tax, and is hoping for eventual 65 percent repayment from the state.

A man and woman were rescued last night from the roof of a car caught by floodwaters in Harford County after a series of storms that dropped as much as 4 inches of rain in parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania, officials said. The 50-year-old man and 45-year-old woman were traveling east on Walters Mill Road, north of Bel Air along Deer Creek, when rising water caused the car to stall. They called 911 with a cell phone at 9:20 p.m., said Bel Air Volunteer Fire Co. Chief Thomas Schaech. A dispatcher instructed them to climb onto the roof of the car when the vehicle started to fill with water.

Imagine being partially buried at the bottom of a 13-foot-deep trench, where loose dirt walls could come tumbling down any minute. Then you look up and see the faces of a specially trained crew of rescuers offering reassurance that you will get out safely. To prepare for such an emergency, Carroll County's Advanced Technical Rescue Team held a classroom and trench rescue training exercise yesterday. It continues today at Wihters participated in the exercise. Sessions include lessons in safety and the correct use of equipment.

From snakebites and assaults to overdoses and water-related injuries, Howard County rescue workers are all too familiar with the stretch of the Little Patuxent River behind the Historic Savage Mill.About 9 p.m. Thursday, about 40 county firefighters spent an hour and a half rescuing a 20-year-old woman, who slipped off a rock and was carried 150 to 200 feet in the rain-swollen river before grabbing hold of a rock.Zahra Safavian, who was uninjured and refused treatment, told firefighters that she was transient and had no home.

Freight service on Maryland Midland Railway tracks was interrupted for about 24 hours Thursday and Friday as company crews rushed to repair a sinkhole that developed under its line outside Westminster.Paul D. Denton, president of the Union Bridge railroad, said the hole, which was 15 feet wide and 8 feet deep, was discovered RTC about 3 p.m. Thursday. The hole was near the two sinkholes that had developed in Wakefield Valley during the past two weeks.A rail inspector found it while completing one of the company's twice-weekly inspections, Mr. Denton said.

Fishing report The locations Piney Run: Panfishing with nightcrawlers is top-notch, say Jim Gronaw and Loren Lustig at the park office. "Tanker" bluegills and huge yellow perch are 18-25 feet deep. Bass are staying along the edges of the grass. Top-water lures in the morning and evening and rubber worms in midday work. Prettyboy Reservoir: The toughest part of fishing right now is launching a boat, says guide Duke Nohe. Best bet? The old gravel road. Fish are 27-32 feet deep, and anglers are having good luck casting surface plugs in the mornings and evenings.

Stone Hill, near the Jones Falls in Hampden, is an appropriate name for a cluster of homes built almost two centuries ago. Dotting a few hillsides on what was once the site of a large flour mill, followed by a sailcloth factory, these quaint two-story duplexes are built of local fieldstone granite and were the 19th-century houses of mill supervisors. One house at the foot of the hill, however, stands out from the others, distinguished by its larger size and detailed appointments. "We walked by this house for 15 years, but thought we could never afford to have something like it," Robyne Thistel remembered.

Having grown up in Philadelphia, Karen Fretz knew the value of buying a piece of history. And that is exactly what she and her husband did in Baltimore when they bought a 125-year-old Hollins Street property, next door to the H.L. Mencken House on Union Square "I loved my house even when it wasn't nice," she says with a laugh. That was in 1985. The three-story, red brick townhouse in the West Baltimore neighborhood was on the market for $60,000. "You should have seen it," Fretz continued.

North of Mount Washington, a new lake is growing. On a sunny morning a hawk soars overhead, riding thermals. Geese fly into the former crushed marble quarry, settling on crystal green water. Nearby, the buzz of building construction recalls a century of other men and machinery that once mined this property. It is a dramatic transformation. After years of furnishing material for Baltimore's best-known roads and buildings, the old Greenspring Quarry is making money in a very 21st-century way. It is becoming Quarry Lake - the centerpiece and key selling point for a new upscale development of homes, offices and shops.

It's no secret that the Gunpowder River is a blue-ribbon trout stream known by anglers all around the Mid-Atlantic states. What made it great was a partnership among fishermen and state and local government. Part of what keeps it great happens almost every fall, when volunteers and biologists conduct a trout count at a handful of spots, called sampling stations, along the upper river. From their careful monitoring, state fisheries managers do their best to keep conditions at their peak.

A man and woman were rescued last night from the roof of a car caught by floodwaters in Harford County after a series of storms that dropped as much as 4 inches of rain in parts of Maryland and Pennsylvania, officials said. The 50-year-old man and 45-year-old woman were traveling east on Walters Mill Road, north of Bel Air along Deer Creek, when rising water caused the car to stall. They called 911 with a cell phone at 9:20 p.m., said Bel Air Volunteer Fire Co. Chief Thomas Schaech. A dispatcher instructed them to climb onto the roof of the car when the vehicle started to fill with water.

As workers began yesterday to rebuild a caved-in Westminster intersection, officials said that the road collapse appears to have been caused by a "classic" sinkhole. Officials initially were unsure whether a water main break had caused the road at Green and Anchor streets to collapse Saturday or whether the main broke after the asphalt caved in. Yesterday, they said that dirt funneling into porous rocks - likely limestone - and undermining street support structures was probably to blame.

An underground fire that has been smoldering since Dec. 7 at a dump site in Bruceville apparently poses no serious environmental threat to county residents, County Commissioner Donald I. Dell said yesterday.The county commissioners and Carroll County health officials visited the dump on Bruceville Road near Keymar yesterday and left with the impression that using bulldozers to uncover the fire's source could make matters worse, Mr. Dell said.Residents apparently have used the ravine -- about 75 feet long and 20 feet deep -- as a dump yard for waste for many years.

REDMOND, Wash. - Over lunch at his home near Seattle, former Chesapeake scientist Donald Heinle recalls one of the clearest views anyone ever had of the bay. It was windless, late fall or early winter 1963, and Heinle was an observer aboard a military transport that had just scrubbed its mission of dropping paratroopers at Virginia's Fort A. P. Hill. The pilot wanted some flight hours under his belt anyhow, so he flew up and down the length of the Chesapeake. He opened the plane's huge rear cargo door, and for four hours Heinle, a doctoral candidate at the University of Maryland, had an unparalleled view of the 2,500-square-mile estuary passing beneath him. He was not just seeing the bay that day. He was seeing the bottom of the bay - nearly all of it, everywhere but the narrow ship channel, ancient gorge of the Susquehanna River.

Utility and public works crews restored gas and water services yesterday to more than three dozen homes affected by a huge sinkhole that devoured an intersection and sheared underground pipes. The sinkhole - 35 feet wide and 20 feet deep - opened up about 6 p.m. Saturday, yawning across the intersection of Anchor and Green streets in Belle Grove Square about 15 feet from a house on the southwest corner, said Thomas B. Beyard, director of planning and public works for Westminster. The sinkhole was described by Beyard as one of the city's worst in a decade.

FOR THE past few months, many of my waking moments have been devoted to intense thought about water. It may be mundane to you, but to me it's the flowing, cleansing, thirst-quenching, life-giving, property value-preserving nectar of the gods. Think of the everyday thrill provided by just the sound of water. The rush of water into the sink. The hissing spray of a hot shower. The liquid satisfaction of a good, healthy flush. At my house, we've been missing these sounds. The drought has taken its toll; our well has been failing.