Fire Officials

Five people were in serious condition after a carbon monoxide leak was reported in Baltimore County, fire officials said. The leak was reported at about 9 a.m. at a residence in the 4100 block of Link Ave. in Nottingham. The victims were taken to an area hospital, a fire dispatcher said. Fire officials believe the toxic gas might have leaked from the hot water heater. jkanderson@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

A Mr. Tire employee is recovering from first- and second-degree burns after a car fire broke out in the Parkville auto repair shop Friday. County fire officials responded to the shop in the 7700 block of Harford Road at around 3:50 p.m. where they saw smoke and flames in the front of the building, and found that a man had suffered burns, according to a release from the department. Emergency personnel took the patient to Bayview Medical Center with non life-threatening injuries, fire officials said.

The damage from the five-alarm fire that destroyed a Fells Point building Monday is estimated at $1.5 million, fire officials said Thursday. The fire caused $500,000 in damage to the three-story Fresh Food Market building at 517 S. Broadway and $1 million in damage to materials inside, Baltimore fire spokesman Chief Kevin Cartwright said. Baltimore fire investigators and police arson detectives are working to identify the cause, but fire officials warned it could take some time because the building is large and unsafe.

Combustible materials stored too close to a furnace burst into flames and caused the October rowhouse fire that claimed five lives, Baltimore fire officials said Thursday. Investigators determined that the two-alarm fire began in the basement and spread quickly through the two-story brick home, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. The chilly evening may have prompted the family to turn on the furnace, he said. The fire struck in the early morning hours of Oct. 11 and quickly destroyed 5601 Denwood Ave., an end-of-group home in the Frankford neighborhood.

An Annapolis teenager is facing arson charges stemming from the weekend fire that investigators say was deliberately set in Anne Arundel Medical Center, county fire officials said Wednesday. The 17-year-old was charged as a juvenile Tuesday night with first-degree arson, second-degree malicious burning and two related counts, Division Chief Michael E. Cox said in a statement. A hearing is being scheduled for next month. Officials said they responded Saturday to the hospital's Health Sciences Building, where they extinguished a small fire in an elevator, and determined that the fire was intentionally set. Investigators had sought the public's help to identify a person seen on surveillance footage, and after questioning the youth, filed charges, Cox said.

A three-alarm fire destroyed a warehouse stocked with garden fertilizer yesterday in Canton, wafting hundreds of yards of thick, brownish-black smoke over the Patapsco River near Interstate 95. No one was hurt in the fire at Lebanon Chemical Corp. warehouse, at 2400 S. Clinton St. in the Canton industrial area. The wood-frame, two-story building sat isolated at the end of a stretch of warehouses, sheds and storage tanks by the river. Fire investigators estimated the damage to the building and its contents - as much as 30 to 40 tons of fertilizer and packaging material - at $1.5 million.

Arson was the cause of a small fire yesterday in a building housing the state and Anne Arundel County NAACP offices, the Annapolis Fire Department said. Carpeting in an open, common area on the first floor of the building was set on fire sometime before 11 a.m., the time an arriving employee of a tenant business called for help at a gas station across the street, officials said. Annapolis Fire Capt. Leonard A. Clark said about two dozen firefighters, in addition to police officers, responded to the alarm for the building at 2563 Forest Drive.

As her three young children looked on, Carla Martinez walked under the green and white awning of the Food Fresh Mart on South Broadway in Fells Point Tuesday evening and peered through a glass door - one of few views left into the building, which was otherwise boarded up after a five-alarm blaze gutted the structure Monday. Martinez, who lives in the neighborhood, said in Spanish that the market had been one of the few sources of cheap groceries in the neighborhood, and she hoped it would be replaced by a similar market.

Every time the alarm sounds at the Winfield fire station, the same question nags at Chief Greg Dods. "As soon as you get the call, all that is going through your head is: Where are we going to get water?" Dods said. "Right now, you can go two miles from this station and have no water." Dods and other fire officials are urging the county to adopt tougher regulations that would force developers to provide a permanent source of water for all new subdivisions. The sources could be an underground tank or an easily accessible pond that could be tapped in an emergency.

Five people were taken to the hospital after they were injured in a crash on Interstate 95 on Sunday night involving multiple cars, Baltimore County Fire Department officials said. The crash happened about 9 p.m. on southbound I-95 near the exit for I-195, officials said. One person was critically injured, two people were seriously injured and two people had minor injuries, the fire department said. The University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center was at capacity, fire officials said, so patients were taken elsewhere.