Smoke Detector

You flip the switch and the heat goes on. You make your mortgage payments and your lender is not threatening you. So all's right with the house. Or not. The furnace needs professional maintenance to run efficiently and the mortgage isn't the only payment you need to be on top of. Even in this market, when real estate prices are falling, a home is likely to be the biggest monetary investment their owners make. But homes need TLC so they don't crumble physically or financially. "Fall is the Goldilocks season for home improvement.

Three members of a family - two of them children - were killed after a blaze swept through a Baltimore apartment complex early yesterday morning. The deadly fire, which witnesses said began before 3 a.m. in one unit and quickly spread throughout the small apartment building at 1903 N. Forest Park Ave. in Franklintown, also displaced about a dozen other families. The victims were found by firefighters in a basement apartment and identified by a family member as Raheem Muhammad, 28, and her son, Royelle Riley, whose 10th birthday would have been today.

No room for dissent with commissionersIt had been my privilege to have contributed in some small degree to Carroll County's fine Landscaping and Forest Conservation ordinances prior to their contrived demise by Commissioner Donald I. Dell.I see he has now found two other politicians willing to help him in the final gutting by establishing a very biased commissioner-appointed committee to cue up their dirty work for them. In their rush to find a rubber stamp in this committee, they have intentionally decided to bypass their own planning commission.

With only 16 fatalities since Jan. 1, Baltimore might end 1999 with the fewest fire deaths since the Fire Department began keeping records in 1938.The record low is 22 deaths in 1996, and Battalion Chief Hector L. Torres, a Fire Department spokesman, said -- barring a string of frigid temperatures forcing people to find dangerous ways to keep warm -- the city should end 1999 below that number.Torres credited the city's smoke detector program, in which firefighters provide and install free smoke detectors to anyone who needs one, for the low number of deaths.

I GOT OUTSMARTED by a smoke detector recently. It happened when I was checking the batteries on the household detectors, a duty I am supposed to perform about once a year.I usually end up doing it after one of the smoke detectors starts "chirping," indicating that it has a low battery. In this case, I did it after my wife had started "suggesting" that since we were going to put a Christmas tree and other flammable holiday decorations our house, it would be good idea to make sure our fire alarm system was functioning.

Jessie Kearney moved into her West Baltimore rowhouse a year ago with five grandchildren and one smoke detector. She installed the device in the hallway near the bedrooms on the third floor.But one smoke detector isn't enough.Yesterday, the mayor and fire chief visited her Poppleton home and installed another one of the potentially life-saving devices in her first-floor living room -- the 50,000th detector the Fire Department has given away in the past four years."You're the first person in Baltimore to have a smoke detector installed by the mayor," Fire Chief Herman Williams Jr. told Kearney, explaining that each floor should have a detector.

A 73-year-old Pleasant Valley man tied bedsheets together to help his wife escape from their smoke-filled home early yesterday before he was rescued by a neighbor, authorities said.Charles and Martha Kirkpatrick were not injured in the fire, which occurred about 12: 10 a.m. at their two-story wooden home at 1818 S. Pleasant Valley Road. A smoke detector awakened the couple, but thick, acrid smoke prevented them from going down the stairs to escape, fire officials said.Mr. Kirkpatrick called 911 from the master bedroom and lowered his wife to a deck before Michael Gist, a neighbor who is an assistant chief of Pleasant Valley Community Fire Company, arrived from across the street to help.

Authorities credited a smoke detector with saving the lives of a New Windsor family when a blaze broke out in a home on Dennings Road early Sunday.David and Patricia Watts were awakened about 4 a.m. by the smoke detector and got their 12-year-old son and 15-month-old daughter out of the house.State fire marshals determined the fire began in an unfinished basement laundry area. A smoldering fire consumed clothing in front of the dryer and sent smoke throughout the house.Firefighters from New Windsor, Westminster and Winfield brought the blaze under control in 15 minutes.

At the William Paca Elementary School yesterday, a classmate of 9-year-old Bradley Walker bolted from his classroom into a hallway, crying, "He was my friend."Parent liaison Shirley Dessesow intercepted him with a hug and a prescription for grief: "It's OK to cry."All over the East Baltimore school, the children mourned Bradley and five siblings who died in a house fire early yesterday. Three were students there, one graduated in June -- and all perished a short walk from the four-story building.

A 73-year-old Maryland City man died early yesterday apparently trying to escape a fire in his trailer home. It was the third fire death this year in the county, and fire officials say it could have been avoided.After they brought the single-alarm fire at James Reed's trailer in Parkway Village under control, firefighters found a smoke detector with batteries so weak it barely emitted a sound."Mr. Reed's chances of escaping his home would have been better" if his alarm had been working, said EMS/Fire/Rescue spokesman J. Gary Sheckells.

You flip the switch and the heat goes on. You make your mortgage payments and your lender is not threatening you. So all's right with the house. Or not. The furnace needs professional maintenance to run efficiently and the mortgage isn't the only payment you need to be on top of. Even in this market, when real estate prices are falling, a home is likely to be the biggest monetary investment their owners make. But homes need TLC so they don't crumble physically or financially. "Fall is the Goldilocks season for home improvement.

With Baltimore County landlords struggling to comply with new rental-property safety requirements, the County Council voted last night to give them another six months, after turning back a bid to repeal the new law. The council, which had been considering giving landlords until Oct. 1, voted unanimously to extend the deadline an extra three months to Jan. 1. The deadline had been July 1 when the council approved the law in December. According to Councilman Vincent J. Gardina, a Towson-Perry Hall Democrat, the bill will help stem the "deterioration of communities," and seeks only to enforce rental property requirements that have been county law for more than two decades.

NEW YORK - Nine times out of 10, cutting costs makes sense. It's painless to go without an expensive lunch every day or to live without the latest and most up-to-date television or cell phone. But there are some purchases that you shouldn't cut back on. In fact, cutting back on these can do more harm than good. From Liz Pulliam Weston of MSN Money, consider these three occasions when you shouldn't cut back: *Car maintenance. If you ignore car maintenance, it will only come back to bite you. Follow your car manual and bring your car in for tune-ups at the recommended mileage.

Inmates get 2 life terms in stabbing of 2 guards Two men already in prison for murder were sentenced yesterday to two life sentences each for the 2006 stabbing of a pair of correctional officers at the now-closed Maryland House of Correction in Jessup. Anne Arundel County Circuit Judge Philip T. Caroom sentenced Brian Troxler, 25, and Donta Walker, 24, to the maximum sentences allowed under the law - two life sentences to run consecutive to the lengthy prison sentences they are serving.

HOLLYWOOD -- There is a girl in a tank top who appears in the lyrics of "Smoke Detector," a backbeat-powered, beach party-worthy romp on Under the Blacklight, the fourth album by the much-loved Los Angeles band Rilo Kiley. She is not wearing a bra, and she cries "Danger!" when she hits the dance floor. Jenny Lewis created this character. But she can't completely relate. "It's not me. I always wear a bra," said Lewis, the band's singer and principal songwriter. "That girl without a bra is a real person," Jason Boesel, Rilo Kiley's drummer, quickly chimed in. "We saw her dancing at a Paul Frank party on the grounds of Wild Rivers, the water park.

A Baltimore man whose fiancee, child and another family member perished in a fire last month filed a $52.3 million lawsuit yesterday against the apartment-building management that he said failed to install potentially life-saving smoke detectors in their home. The lawsuit, filed in Baltimore Circuit Court, names Salomon Rosskamn of the Blue Fountain Apartments as the defendant. Rosskamn could not be reached for comment yesterday. At a news conference, Roy E. Riley Jr., 28, said he was left homeless after the July 14 fire in an apartment in the 1900 block of N. Forest Ave. in Franklintown.

Three members of a family - two of them children - were killed after a blaze swept through a Baltimore apartment complex early yesterday morning. The deadly fire, which witnesses said began before 3 a.m. in one unit and quickly spread throughout the small apartment building at 1903 N. Forest Park Ave. in Franklintown, also displaced about a dozen other families. The victims were found by firefighters in a basement apartment and identified by a family member as Raheem Muhammad, 28, and her son, Royelle Riley, whose 10th birthday would have been today.

Prince George's County fire investigators have determined that a malfunction in an electrical appliance caused the blaze that killed a University of Maryland student last week in his off-campus apartment, the Fire Department said yesterday. David Ellis, 22, a senior majoring in American studies, died at Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park after firefighters found him unconscious and not breathing in his bedroom in the basement apartment where he lived with another student in the 7100 block of Rossburg Drive in College Park.

A fire in an East Baltimore apartment claimed the life of an 80-year-old woman yesterday morning and sent three people to the hospital, bringing the number of fire deaths in the city to 19 this year. Firefighters responding about 8:30 a.m. to a report of a fire in the 4100 block of E. Lombard St. found heavy smoke coming from the windows of two second-floor apartments, city fire officials said. Eight of the nine residents who occupied one apartment had escaped through a back entrance and indicated to firefighters that someone was trapped inside.

A baby, a toddler and a 4-year-old were killed in a fire that ripped through an East Baltimore rowhouse early yesterday, the latest fatalities in a year that has seen a marked increase in city fire deaths. The blaze in the 2400 block of E. Madison St. began shortly before 3:30 a.m. and engulfed the first and second floors. Firefighters found the children - a 1-month-old, 2-year-old and 4-year-old - in a second-floor bedroom, suffering from smoke inhalation and burns. They were pronounced dead at Johns Hopkins Hospital.