Trench

A do-it-yourself home waterproofing project nearly turned to tragedy yesterday when a trench collapsed, trapping a Glen Burnie woman and her young son.The woman, Lynn Reich, 33, was hoisted from the 8-foot-deep trench by Anne Arundel County firefighters about 6:20 p.m., more than two hours after the accident in the 1400 block of Crain Highway South.Ms. Reich suffered an injury to her left leg. She was taken to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where her condition was listed as serious last night.

As the clock ticks down on the sequester solution to the nation's budget mess, it's looking more and more like a descent into World War I trench warfare. The two partisan sides are dug in, declining to surrender inches of policy and ideological territory, while the political battlefield continues to be torn up around them. Behind all the figures on proposed Republican cuts and Democratic demands for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans, the same basic argument remains over which much of the 2012 presidential election was fought: What is the proper size and role of the federal government in fulfilling the purposes for which the nation was formed, as succinctly laid out in the preamble to the Constitution?

A plumbing company employee was trapped for several hours yesterday after a trench collapsed outside a West Baltimore home, causing injuries to his legs, a city Fire Department spokesman reported. The man's identity was not available. About 11:30 a.m., a worker for Quality Plumbing was in a 7-foot-deep, 18-foot-long trench making repairs to a sewer line leading to a house in the 2800 block of Koko Lane when a portion of one wall of the trench collapsed, trapping the man up to his knees, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, the spokesman.

I recently found myself in Howard County General Hospital's emergency room. As a lifelong county resident, I am familiar with the ER and the volume of patients that fill the lobby each day. During my wait to be treated I saw a neighbor who need to be treated for multiple bee stings and a customer coming in to deliver his first child. I spent the next eight hours being diagnosed to rule out different causes for my condition and was ultimately admitted for a severe infection to my knee and leg. From the minute I stepped into HCGH I came in contact with very dedicated professionals bent on healing their charges.

The parents of a Crofton man killed two years ago when he was buried alive at a construction site filed a $52 million suit yesterday in Circuit Court, alleging that negligence by county inspectors and the project's developer's contributed to their son's death.Joan and Carl Para, of the 1700 block of Reading St. in Crofton, claim the county, the Enterprise Washington Corp. of Dover, Del. and the Richards Group of Washington, based in Chantilly, Va., should have taken more stringent precautions to protect workers because of the unstable soils at the Crofton Meadows housing development.

MANCHESTER -- A ditch that caved in on a 23-year-old plumbing worker yesterday afternoon wasn't shored up properly, a fire official said, causing Maryland's second construction cave-in in three weeks.Raymond Smith, an employee of William Blubaugh Plumbing of Silver Run, was in stable condition last night at Carroll County General Hospital after being buried for a few minutes about 4:15 p.m."He was very, very lucky," Manchester Fire Chief Steven Miller said. "It was an accident waiting to happen."

A Gwynnbrook man who fell into a 20-foot deep trench while playing catch was in serious but stable condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, Baltimore County police said.Police said Burt Wayne Gayleard, 19, and friends were playing with a football about 6: 45 p.m. behind Gayleard's home in the 11100 block of Reisterstown Road when he fell into the trench at a housing construction site and struck a concrete sewer pipe.The county's Advanced Tactical Rescue Team and firefighters removed Gayleard from the trench about 7: 35 p.m.Pub Date: 3/28/97

A construction worker was in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after being rescued yesterday afternoon from a mud-filled trench, a Baltimore County Fire Department official said. The man, believed to be in his mid-50s and whose name was not released, was standing on a scaffold attached to a water pumping station under construction in the 700 block of Seneca Park Road in Bowleys Quarters about 3 p.m. when he fell at least 15 feet into a muddy trench, said Lt. Howard Thode, a communications division supervisor.

CROWNSVILLE -- Anne Arundel County firefighters found the body early yesterday of a 32-year-old man who was buried under 6 feet of earth after an unshored trench caved in.The body of Aaron Roger Duckworth was found at 3:19 a.m. and removed from the 20-foot-deep, 6-foot-wide trench about an hour later, said Officer V. Richard Molloy, an Anne Arundel County police spokesman.Officer Molloy said "Skip" Duckworth as he was known, who lived in the 700 block of Old Herald Harbor Road, worked as a handyman in the Crownsville area.

A dirt wall collapsed yesterday and trapped a worker in a trench at Chinquapin Round Road and Forest Drive for more than two hours.Edmund F. Parker, 34, was pinned at the knees beneath a boulder-sized clump of dirt when city and county firefighters arrived about 11 a.m., said Capt. Leonard Clark, a spokesman for the city Fire Department.Mr. Parker apparently entered the hole, which was 8 feet deep and 10 feet square, before it had been properly shored up.A spokesman for the Maryland Occupational Safety and Health Administration said his agency is investigating the accident.

Even though two defensive linemen could be taken in the first three picks, there is a good chance that an appealing one will fall to the Ravens near the bottom of the first round next week. Penn State's Jared Odrick, the consensus No. 3 defensive tackle in the draft, fits the personality of the Ravens' defense. In commenting on Odrick's high-energy play and toughness, one team official recently said, "he plays like a Raven." Odrick was named the Big 10's defensive player of the year by the league's coaches after he recorded 43 tackles last season for the Nittany Lions.

At times during training camp at McDaniel College in Westminster, the Ravens' first defense has featured Kelly Gregg and Haloti Ngata at defensive tackle. And Justin Bannan and Dwan Edwards. And Brandon McKinney and Kelly Talavou. The ever-changing personnel is a hallmark of the Ravens' wildly unpredictable defense. But perhaps more pointedly, it's a testament to the kind of depth the unit enjoys when it comes to plugging the interior of the defensive line. Gregg and Ngata are the expected starters, but Bannan made 15 regular-season and three playoff starts alongside Ngata last year when Gregg and Edwards were lost for the season because of injuries.

River Hill senior Scott Trench is what his wrestling coach Brandon Lauer calls "a throwback" - a high school athlete who excels not at one or even two sports, but three. "It's hard to excel at the highest level nowadays in three different varsity sports," Lauer said. "But Scott brings a tremendous work ethic. You know you can rely on him to work hard, and that's why he succeeds in athletics and academics." Trench, 18 with a 3.9 grade-point average, was the kicker and tight end for the Hawks' football team that won the state Class 2A championship; he wrestled in the 171-pound weight class and finished this season as the state runner-up; and now he heads into the lacrosse season where he is the Hawks faceoff man. "He's a guy I'm going to talk to my teams about for years," Lauer said.

3 touchdowns Wilde Lake running back Jarrel Epps scored in the Wildecats' 21-14 win over Howard in a Class 3A East regional semifinal on Friday. 14 state championships in volleyball won by Centennial - a record. 57 kickoffs River Hill kicker Scott Trench had in seven games this season.

When Gov. Martin O'Malley proposed a voter referendum on legalizing slot machine gambling, freshman Del. Craig L. Rice opposed it because he thought the General Assembly should decide major policy decisions and not send them to the ballot box. But Rice changed his mind when fellow legislators who represent the proposed sites for slots parlors asked him to vote for the referendum. "Slots are not proposed for my district, so I deferred to them," said Rice, a Democrat who represents Montgomery County.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The political bloc loyal to the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr announced yesterday that it had decided to resume participation in the Iraqi parliament. Also, U.S. and Iraqi officials announced a ban on truck traffic into Kirkuk and proposed digging a trench around the northern city, where a series of bombs killed at least 76 people a day earlier. The idea of encircling the city with a trench underscored fears that the violence in Baghdad and neighboring Diyala province will overtake the once-peaceful north as increased U.S. troop levels drive insurgents from the capital.

Those who knew him best say Francis Allen Mercilliott invited trouble. At 53, he still liked to go bar-hopping with his son, get into fistfights that recalled his days as an amateur boxing champion and occasionally drop by his ex-wife's home even though she had forbidden him to visit.And Mr. Mercilliott, who led steam-pipe replacement projects for Gaithersburg-based M&M Welding and Fabricators Inc., performed his work with a similar disdain for caution. That explains why, say his son and his friends, he jumped into an unsecured trench early June 7 at a work site on the Springfield Hospital Center grounds in Sykesville.

A Severn man installing a methane gas retrieval system at the Millersville landfill was trapped in a trench for nearly two hours yesterday before county firefighters were able to free him.Jerome Legrand, 38, of the 1700 block of Carriage Court in Severn was in serious but stable condition yesterday afternoon at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was taken after rescue workers freed him from the 8-foot deep trench, where he was up to his knees in mud...

Trench coats are hot, hot, hot for spring. They're coming in many colors and with lots of modern details, such as oddly shaped buttons, wide collars and mod A-lined shapes. We liked this trench because it was a little bit trendy and a little bit retro at the same time. WONDERING IF YOU WERE GLIMPSED? Check out baltimoresun.com / glimpsed for additional photos of fashion-forward locals and a critique by fashion writer Tanika White of the styles she saw around town.

A plumbing company employee was trapped for several hours yesterday after a trench collapsed outside a West Baltimore home, causing injuries to his legs, a city Fire Department spokesman reported. The man's identity was not available. About 11:30 a.m., a worker for Quality Plumbing was in a 7-foot-deep, 18-foot-long trench making repairs to a sewer line leading to a house in the 2800 block of Koko Lane when a portion of one wall of the trench collapsed, trapping the man up to his knees, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, the spokesman.