Ignited

Two small fires were set yesterday at Baltimore's Southwestern High School complex, according to Antonio Williams, chief of the city schools police. The first fire was reported about 8:30 a.m. in a storage room on the first floor of the school in the 200 block of Font Hill Ave. "Someone stuffed something under the door and ignited it," Williams said. The second fire occurred a few minutes later in the boys locker room in the building's basement. Williams said that someone ignited a T-shirt and stuffed it under the door.

Kerosene spilled on an operating unvented space heater ignited and destroyed a two-story house in Sykesville Sunday night.Bob Thomas, Maryland deputy chief fire marshal, said the two-alarm blaze caused about $100,000 damage to the wood frame dwelling in the 700 block of Church St.Mr. Thomas said Michael Smith, 33, son of the owner, Nancy Smith, was alone in the house about 10:40 p.m. when he tried to refuel the kerosene heater.Mr. Thomas said that Mr. Smith accidentally spilled fuel over the heater and on the floor.

The two-alarm fire that killed an Elkridge artist and destroyed her split-level home Jan. 12 was caused by furnace exhaust heat that escaped through a faulty joint and then ignited floorboards.W. Faron Taylor, deputy chief fire marshal, said that Florence Riefle Bahr, 88, died of carbon monoxide poisoning, consistent with what apparently was a slow, smoldering fire that eventually became a raging blaze. It took firefighters 50 minutes to control the fire.Taylor said a joint in the furnace's pipe, in the ceiling of the basement, broke some time ago, allowing heat to penetrate the floorboards of the house in the 6000 block of Old Lawyer's Hill Road.

A fast-moving fire destroyed a $40,000 wood-frame house at 338 Forest Beach Road late Friday. No one was injured.A furnace in a crawl space under the floor ignited the flooring and, because no one arrived home until about 11: 50 p.m., the fire spread undetected until it engulfed the single-story house, said Battalion Chief Gary Sheckells, the Anne Arundel County EMS Fire-Rescue spokesman.Pub Date: 4/13/97

Burned man is identified The homeless man who was found dead early Sunday lying between two burning vehicles at an Essex used-car dealership has been identified as August Edward Hisker, 60, Baltimore County police said. Firefighters found Hisker's burned body when they responded about 6:20 a.m. to the Auto Bank lot in the 1000 block of Eastern Blvd., police said. Police said it appeared Hisker had been trying to keep warm in a van on the lot when a cigarette ignited the fire, which spread to two adjacent vehicles.

A family of five fled into freezing temperatures when smoldering ashes left in a garage ignited a fire at their Scaggsville home early yesterday, fire officials said.No one was injured in the 12:20 a.m. fire in the 10300 block of Derby Drive, but two cars and other property inside the garage and home were destroyed.The fire caused $200,000 in damage, fire officials said.Cold weather and ice hampered firefighters' efforts to fight the blaze, said Lt. Ken Byerly, a Howard County fire spokesman.

A century ago, three words (none of them "Lewinsky") summed up the tense political situation of the day: Remember the Maine.The U.S. battleship Maine, moored off Cuba, had exploded into the night sky Feb. 15, 1898, tossing dead and wounded sailors into Havana Harbor. Its sinking tipped the United States and Spain, already locked in an intense dispute over Cuba's struggle for independence, toward war.Ever since, the question has bobbed at the surface of military history: What really sank the USS Maine?

Two state agencies have launched investigations of a Northwest Baltimore salon where a woman was badly burned Saturday after a bowl of heated acetone ignited while she was having her artificial nails removed. The action by Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the state Board of Cosmetologists comes two days after Niquita Andrews, 35, was burned at the Nail Studio in the 5400 block of Reisterstown Road. The Owings Mills woman had been soaking her hands in a small machine that heated acetone when the flammable chemical ignited, said Kevin Cartwright, a Baltimore fire spokesman.

As the Wafra oil field on the Kuwaiti-Saudi Arabian border continued to blaze yesterday, scientists and environmentalists warned that the fire could be just the first shot in a potentially catastrophic ecological war.In Kuwait, the occupying Iraqi army has control of 1,000 oil facilities, including hundreds of oil fields, refineries and storage tanks, said Brent Blackwelder, vice president of policy for the Washington-based environmental organization Friends...

Mourners were to gather at a West Baltimore rowhouse in preparation for the funeral of a 79-year-old family leader who died Sunday and was to be buried yesterday.But when they pulled up to the Edgewood Street house yesterday, wearing black tuxedos and fancy dresses, they found firefighters digging through debris and pulling out a stack of charred Bibles that were part of a family collection, and ambulances whisking the deceased man's widow and daughter to the hospital.The widow, Georgia Hamlin, 77, and daughter, Joyce Black, 59, were dressing for the funeral when an air conditioner on the second floor overheated and ignited, fire officials said.