Water Pipe

An old pipe burst in the William S. James Senate office building Monday afternoon, flooding a slew of offices and prompting the Department of General Services to temporarily shutter the building. Thirty-five of the state's 47 senators have offices in the building, and staff members were moving equipment out of offices on the fourth floor Monday afternoon. The pipe failed on the west side of the fourth floor, where many GOP members have their offices. Sam Cook, a director at the Department of General Services, said the building will reopen Tuesday morning.

The residents of Loudon Avenue in Elkridge say they could put up with the dusty cars and driveways blocked by gravel. The real problems caused by laying a water pipe just east of U.S. 1, they say, are interrupted cable service, muddy drinking water and gas leaks."

The National Transportation Safety Board is nearing the end of the fact-finding phase of its investigation into the Howard Street train tunnel derailment and fire, but it has not yet determined what caused the five-day inferno that hobbled the city. NTSB officials said yesterday they have completed several key steps of the investigation into the accident July 18 last year and should release the public docket, or statement of facts, early next year. A final report, which would include the probable cause, would come months after that.

In Baltimore City Police identify two of the men killed in holiday shootings Police released the identities yesterday of two men who were killed in a rash of shootings that left five dead in the hours after Fourth of July celebrations. Shawn Gault, 26, of the 2400 block of Calverton Heights Ave. was pronounced dead at Bon Secours Hospital after suffering a gunshot wound to the chest as he drove to work in the 1800 block of Moreland Ave. about 7 a.m. Friday. George Gaines, 24, of the 1700 block of Montpelier, was pronounced dead at Union Memorial Hospital at 9:15 a.m. Friday after he was shot at a bus stop at The Alameda and Harford Road.

Bea Gaddy used to tell her children that if disaster struck they should expect to handle it alone. Yesterday, a pair of Towson homebuilders proved her wrong.When you feed dozens of people a day, as Mrs. Gaddy does in her East Baltimore row house soup kitchen, a flood from a broken water pipe can wreak havoc. And when you learn that repairing the pipe is going to cost $6,700, havoc begets disaster.That's what Mrs. Gaddy faced until Gary Houston and Rick Yaffe of Landmark Homes arrived at her North Collington Avenue home yesterday with an offer to fix the whole mess.

It was in the middle of our vacation that the water stopped working.I was sitting down to Sunday night supper in the picturesque seaside community of Chincoteague, Va., when my wife asked " Why isn't any water coming out of the kitchen faucet?"As a veteran of plumbing wars, I knew there were few happy answers to that question.I sat at the supper table for minute, fork in hand, hoping that the water would somehow surge through the faucet. I considered tapping the faucet with my fork. I remember reading that a similar technique once worked for Moses on a rock.

YES, THIS HAS been a hard winter. But it has brought us out of snow-wimpery. We got some snow yesterday. It was not pleasant, but we didn't fold. Snow doesn't scare us in Baltimore like it used to.We cleared the walks, brushed off the cars. We got to work. There didn't seem to be the sense of panic that normally descends on the city with a snowfall. Anger and resignation, but not terror.Yesterday as I shoveled snow off the back walk for the third time this week and for what may be the 20th time since Thanksgiving, I thought of how this rough weather has changed our attitude toward the white stuff.

A water pipe blocked by tiny pieces of "slag" — likely pipe shavings or soldering residue — was to blame for the water issues that left many residents of the downtown Zenith apartments without water or air conditioning this week, according to a city public works spokesman. Going floor to floor Tuesday afternoon, crews restored services in the 21-story building, said Lauren McDonald, a spokeswoman for the company that manages the Zenith. The slag pieces, each about the size of a dime, were located by city crews Monday in the filtering screen of a 6-inch-wide "backflow preventer" in the building's internal water system, not in lines maintained by the city, said Kurt Kocher, the public works spokesman.

From dawn to dusk yesterday, scores of residents from water-damaged houses in East Baltimore lined up for food and clothing vouchers while public officials tried to figure out the cause of one of the worst water main breaks in city history.City crews tore down another three houses and worked on the ruptured 60-year-old pipe that is part of an extensive but aging water supply system for Baltimore and much of the surrounding area.More than half of the city-run, 3,500-mile water system is made up of the same unlined, cast-iron pipes as the 5-foot main that burst early Saturday morning, prompting an emergency evacuation of 83 people in the Greenmount East neighborhood.

This is the time of year that city workers and motorists alike experience a rash of headaches - but not the kind requiring aspirin and some rest. Instead, they deal with water main breaks, often prompted by aging pipes and extremely cold temperatures. As of yesterday, city Department of Public Works crews were battling about 40 water main breaks, some trickier than others, said spokesman Kurt Kocher. That's not a particularly daunting number, especially given the recent frigid weather, but the breaks disrupt traffic and force workers to spend hours in the cold repairing them.