Garage

A fire, started by an overheated wood stove burning scraps, destroyed a brick and concrete double garage in the 2500 block of Uniontown Road yesterday.Glenn M. Stambaugh, 83, whose hobby is making furniture in his 25-by-30-foot garage, said, "I started a fire in the stove to get rid of the wood scraps from a child's rocking chair I was making. I went in the house to have dinner when my wife, Margaret, called me, and the stove must have got too hot."She saw the fire and told me, and I told her to call the fire department.

While most Howard County residents wouldn't give strangers their house keys, police say that's what many of them do by leaving garage door openers in cars parked outside.In the past three months, burglars have stolen items from at least six homes by taking advantage of residents' carelessness.Burglaries in the county declined in the first nine months of 1994. And though just seven burglaries using the garage opener method were reported last year -- four in Columbia, two in Ellicott City and one in North Laurel -- police warn that the number will increase unless residents change their habits.

OCEAN CITY - Speed, not faulty construction, has been blamed for the failure of steel restraining cables in an Ocean City parking garage where two men were killed Saturday. Brian T. Donnellan and Stefan Forpin, both 23-year-old New York residents, were fatally injured when their Chevrolet Blazer broke through the barrier and fell 40 feet to the ground, according to a report. Witnesses said the truck was traveling about 30 mph when it hit the cables. Ocean City's chief building official, Mike Richardson, said the cables appeared to have been structurally sound.

A thief walked into a garage Monday afternoon and stole the bicycle of a Pasadena boy who was in his house watching television, county police said.Josh Scott Wargo, 13, was in his house about 4:15 p.m. when he heard the garage door open. Thinking it was his mother returning home, the boy ignored the noise, police said.A few minutes later, after his mother hadn't come in, the youth went to the garage and found that his $275, 20-inch, chrome Robinson BMX bicycle had been stolen. The bicycle's frame has a red, white and blue logo with "Robinson" on it. The name Robinson also appears on black pads attached to the handlebars, police said.

A few years ago, when Baltimore architect Jeffrey Lees surveyed his client's property for an addition, he rejected building outward into the back yard. Like many homes in the Baltimore County town of Garrison, the 1940s Colonial had a well to supply water and it was situated right where the homeowners wanted to add a family room.Mr. Lees decided the best way to remodel was to convert the two-car, attached garage and the hyphen -- the breezeway between it and the house -- into the additional living space.

Deejay Alan Field cued up an Engelbert Humperdinck CD the other day and rolled his chair back from the console."I began my career in a building that looked like a garage. Now I'm really working in one," he joked, sweeping his arm around the "studio" of WHLP-AM (1360).Indeed it is a garage, in a typical suburban house in Baltimore County, home of the station's chief engineer. As Mr. Field worked, he could see a motorcycle parked along one wall, spare tires stacked against another and an extension ladder hanging on hooks.

Firefighters from Carroll and Baltimore counties investigated an odor in a two-car, two-story garage in the 5100 block of Hoffmanville Road near Alesia Monday night.Units from Lineboro and Manchester responded to the initial call at at 7:31 p.m. Lineboro firefighters noticed an unusual odor upon arrival, but were unable to identify the smell even with a four-gas monitoring instrument.The Baltimore County hazardous materials unit, based in Brooklandville, was not able to determine the cause of the odor with its monitors.

WE HAD PARKED on an upper floor of the garage south of the Baltimore Arena for the last performance of the circus Sunday night. So when we came out, my 10-year-old son, Nathan, and I, heads still buzzing with the spectacular blare of the "Greatest Show on Earth," we found the traffic stalled in bumper-to-bumper circles from our car all the way down four floors to the snail-paced cash window. We could have sat in line with the engine idling, breathing exhaust fumes and fretting over the moral dilemmas of gridlock.

In midtown Baltimore, three stories of steel and reinforced concrete offer hope of better times for both a neighborhood and a way of travel.About two months away from completion, the long-awaited Pennsylvania Station parking garage has taken shape at the foot of the 84-year-old train depot, at St. Paul and Charles streets and the Jones Falls Expressway.For rail commuters and Amtrak patrons, the garage will offer a convenient place to park their cars. For Charles Street commuters, it will mean an end to the major traffic tie-up caused by construction.

Saturday night in downtown Baltimore, Peggy Kolodny and her husband topped off a happy visit to the city's Whitbreaded waterfront by driving through a squall in one of its parking garages. Let's put it this way - they didn't exactly sail out of the place.They got in their cars at 11:15 p.m. and did not exit the East Pratt Street garage until 12:45 a.m. The line of traffic did not move for 10 minutes at a time. One couple had time to get out, kick up the stereo and dance. (Apparently, the garage's cashier had problems that brought traffic to a halt.