Inspections

The Baltimore County Council extended an inspection program for rental housing to the entire county last night, a measure that supporters say will crack down on poorly kept properties. Under the bill, which passed by a 4-3 vote, owners of buildings containing six or fewer rental units must hire contractors to inspect the homes every three years and obtain rental licenses. Violators would face daily fines of $1,000. Councilmen Stephen G. Samuel Moxley of Catonsville and Joseph Bartenfelder of Fullerton, both Democrats, and T. Bryan McIntire, a north county Republican, voted against the bill.

— Just after dawn Tuesday, law enforcement officers began yanking hundreds of trucks off the Capital Beltway and funneling them to an inspection lot a long touchdown pass from FedEx Field. The truck-safety dragnet pulled over 420 rigs and resulted in 12 drivers and 87 vehicles being taken off the road. Offenses ranged from falsified log books and drivers spending too many hours behind the wheel to bad tires and defective brakes. "Within an hour, drivers from Maine to Florida will know we're out here," said State Police Capt.

WITH the vivid memory of last year's massive Patuxent River oil spill in mind, the General Assembly should not hesitate to authorize regular Maryland inspections of intrastate pipelines. The Senate has passed a bill giving the Public Service Commission authority to develop rules and oversee annual inspections of "hazardous liquid" pipelines. The PSC already supervises inspection of natural gas pipelines in Maryland. Pipeline inspections are mostly the responsibility of a woefully inadequate federal system.

Overnight Tuesday, a wormlike apparatus with green plastic tentacles sending out electromagnetic waves was to wind its way through nearly six miles of a Baltimore water main, detecting potential trouble areas along the pipe. "This is better for pipes that can't be taken out of service" for manual checks, said Travis Wagner, a civil engineer with Pure Technologies, a company with offices in Columbia that owns the tool, called the PipeDiver. The device is being used to inspect the Southwest Transmission Main, a stretch of pipe that is more than four feet in diameter and runs from the Ashburton Water Filtration Plant in Northwest Baltimore into Baltimore, Howard and Anne Arundel counties.

WASHINGTON -- Top Bush administration officials said that United Nations-led inspections of suspected Iraq weapons facilities were proceeding without problems.Acting Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, appearing on a CBS morning news broadcast yesterday, confirmed reports from Baghdad that the first inspections had begun since a three-week standoff last month at the Iraqi Agriculture Ministry. "There was no attempt to stop [the inspections]," Mr. Eagleburger said.Recently, an Iraqi government official was quoted as saying further U.N. inspections of ministry buildings would not be allowed.

My recent column on home inspector qualifications prompted Cathy Tyler Lewis of Glen Burnie to ask how two separate inspections of her mother's 60-year-old house could have produced such different results. After listing the house for sale, she had an inspector go over the house in order to secure a home owner's warranty, known in the industry as a "HOW." She stated that the inspector's suggestions for repairs were relatively minor, and the repairs were made. Soon after, someone interested in buying the house had it inspected by a different inspector from the same inspection company.

Last month -- facing complaints from public housing residents about poor living conditions -- Annapolis' mayor and eight aldermen proposed authorizing the city's Department of Public Works to inspect the Housing Authority's 10 complexes. But they have not decided who will foot the bill for inspections and repairs. "We don't have money for that," Mayor Dean L. Johnson said. To determine where the money will come from, the council will hold a work session at 6 p.m. today with officials from the city's housing authority and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

With a glowing report from code inspectors about their first attempts to systematically catalog and inspect rental properties in Baltimore County, one county councilman said he will propose extending the pilot program to include several Towson-area neighborhoods. Councilman Vincent J. Gardina, a Towson-Perry Hall Democrat, said he would like to see the owners of rental properties in Loch Raven Village, Ridgely Manor and possibly several areas near Towson University be required to register their units with the county and have them inspected.

Saying they've been "nit-picked" by state inspectors, several of Baltimore's school bus contractors insisted to motor vehicle officials yesterday that city buses are not as problem-filled as inspection records show, and that clearer guidelines are needed. Yesterday's meeting at a city schools office building in Northeast Baltimore occurred amid growing concerns that many city bus contractors are driving potentially unsafe buses. A recent review of state safety records by The Sun showed that city buses are more than twice as likely to have major defects as buses in area counties.

Southwest Airlines expects to run its full schedule Tuesday after three days with hundreds of canceled flights following an incident Friday in which the metal surface of a plane burst open during flight and a weekend during which small cracks were found on other planes. The airline, Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport's dominant carrier, canceled about 70 flights nationwide Monday, as workers continued inspecting the company's aircraft. About 300 flights were canceled Sunday.

An Aberdeen hotel was condemned by county and city building code enforcement officials following a fire Wednesday morning, according to the Maryland State Fire Marshal's Office. Firefighters quickly extinguished the fire in two unoccupied rooms of the Days Inn hotel in Aberdeen, in the 700 block of West Bel Air Avenue, but not before the fire caused about $40,000 in damages, according to fire officials. A routine investigation of the premises by fire investigators found what the fire marshal's office called "serious and multiple fire, building and electrical violations.

About 15 vehicles driving on the inner loop of Interstate 695 in southwestern Baltimore County were damaged Monday night after hundreds of rocks from a railroad overpass fell onto the busy highway, according to Maryland State Police. No injuries were reported, but vehicles were damaged with dents, scratches and cracked windshields, police said. Police began receiving reports from motorists just before 7 p.m. that rocks were falling from the Hollins Ferry railroad overpass. Officials from the State Highway Administration responded to the scene and helped clear rocks from I-695, which was temporarily closed.

Anne Arundel County officials are warning residents to beware of a scam aimed at the elderly advertising fraudulent Fire Department home inspections. An Annapolis resident received a letter purporting to be from the county Fire Department earlier this month. The letter stated that Fire Department officials would conducting a home inspection within the next month, a service that the department only does at businesses, officials said. County Executive John R. Leopold, warned residents that the letters are "fake.

The Mount Royal Tavern closed temporarily Thursday night after it failed an inspection by the Baltimore City Health Department.  The failed inspection was a result of a lack of hot water running in the bathrooms and a fruit fly infestation, according to Brian Schleter, spokesman for the health department. Schleter confirmed the bar's owner addressed both of the issues Friday morning, which included installing a new hot water tank. He says the inspection came after the department received a complaint.

Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Southern Maryland is due for closer scrutiny by federal regulators after unspecified security lapses discovered there earlier this year. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has finalized a "greater than green" finding of security deficiencies spotted during a special inspection from January to July of this year, according to a letter released Wednesday. The agency has not disclosed the nature of the problems, saying that releasing such information might help someone to attack or sabotage the twin-reactor plant in Lusby in Calvert County.

As a change of pace from our usual Naughty Business of the Week posts, I just wanted to direct readers to my story today about the inspectors from the Maryland Department of Agriculture's Weights and Measures program . You may recognize the orange stickers that their field inspectors place on gas pumps that have been tested for accuracy throughout the state, but did you know they also test the weights of packages as well as verify electronic price...

A rental property owned by Mayor Sheila Dixon failed a federally required housing inspection at least six times in the past three years, and a city agency has repeatedly threatened to suspend her from a subsidized rental program because of those inspections, documents obtained by The Sun show. Handwritten inspection reports for the single-family rowhouse in the 2200 block of Ruskin Ave. indicate that many of the problems are relatively minor, from a leaky ceiling and flaking paint to worn caulk around a tub, records show.

A day after the largest East Coast earthquake in more than 60 years, Marylanders continued to deal with the fallout, as officials assessed the effects on buildings and infrastructure, transit riders saw delays and some federal workers and public school students got an extra day off. Although the tremor lasted for just a few moments Tuesday afternoon, damage prompted a Fells Point church to relocate services. State inspectors were busy assessing roads and bridges as the region braced for the predicted weekend effects of Hurricane Irene.

For an airplane fuselage to be torn open ("Southwest grounds jets after hole opens midair," April 3) this particular plane could not have been thoroughly and timely inspected for a long, long time. After this horrific occurrence, now the inspections begin. It seems to me that the inspection process is certainly not what it is "cracked up" to be. Ruth Fried, Owings Mills