Vol. Firefighter Named the "Firefighter's Firefighter" To Be Buried Today

Mark Gray Falkenhan was a "firefighter's firefighter," a man driven to battle flames and train others to do so.

When the Baltimore County volunteer ran into a burning apartment building Wednesday in the Hillendale area, he was doing what he always did, using his instincts and his training, looking for cues about the risks he was taking. "Up until those last few moments, Mark did the right thing," said Division Chief Michael W. Robinson, his former boss at the Baltimore County Fire-Rescue Academy, who had known Falkenhan for a quarter-century. "In this case, the risk played itself out."

A 43-year-old volunteer firefighter and father of two boys, Falkenhan died in the fire after sending a "mayday" distress signal, his body found on the building's third floor by a rescue team. Two residents of the Towson Crossing complex were critically injured.

Falkenhan had worked as a career firefighter on the county force for 16 years until 2006, when he joined the U.S. Secret Service, training agents and officers to respond to life-threatening incidents. On occasion, he would accompany the presidential protection team. But in his off hours, he still fought fires as a member of the Lutherville Volunteer Fire Company, whose firehouse was draped Thursday in black-and-purple bunting in his honor.

"He's the fire service version of a Renaissance man," Kyrle Preis III, director of the county's Emergency Medical Services Division, said of Falkenhan, with whom he went through the fire academy, both graduating in 1990. "He's a search-and-rescue guy, tactical rescue, a paramedic, a certified diver, he drove the equipment, he became fire chief of the volunteer force down there in Middle River. He had all these disciplines, and he taught all that as well. You can't think of anything the guy couldn't do."

Three of his fellow firefighters, working on an ambulance behind the station Thursday, declined to comment on what had happened. "We're dealing with a lot of things right now," one of them said.

Mary Catherine Haines, a first cousin to Falkenhan, said at her Dundalk home that everyone in the family is "in such a state of shock — we just can't believe it." Falkenhan's death was especially disturbing to Haines and her relatives because it occurred only a week after the passing of her own father, William H. Falkenhan Sr., a 91-year-old retired Baltimore County firefighter and Falkenhan's uncle. At the funeral Saturday, Falkenhan served as a pallbearer for his uncle, who had inspired him years ago to become a firefighter.

"At his graduation from the fire academy, Mark gave a speech, and he said he had big boots to fill," Haines recalled. "He followed my dad into the Baltimore County Fire Department and now he's followed him into heaven."
To add to the family's woes, Falkenhan's father-in-law, Edwin Emkey Sr., who was an honorary county fire chief — a title seldom awarded, according to Robinson — died just last month. He was given a funeral with full firefighter's honors.

Having attended that event, Falkenhan's 14-year-old son, Christian — the other son is 5 — told Haines that he "couldn't handle another funeral so soon" and declined to go to William Falkenhan's last week. Now that the boy's own father is dead, Haines said, "I can't even imagine what he must be feeling."

Haines remembered the day Falkenhan proposed to his future wife, Gladys — Emkey's daughter — on the beach in Ocean City, during a Firefighters' Week outing: "There was a big crowd of us, maybe 25 people, from his natural family and his firefighters' family, leaning over the railing. We were all screaming to Gladys, 'Say yes! Say yes!' "

Falkenhan is survived by his father, Casper Falkenhan, who is 85, and two siblings. His mother died several year ago, Haines said.

In memory of Falkenhan, Gov. Martin O'Malley ordered that state and U.S. flags be flown at half-staff until sunset Monday, the day of his funeral. The county Fire Department's commendations board posthumously awarded its Medal of Honor to Falkenhan, for action "above and beyond the call of duty, at the grave risk of personally being killed or seriously injured." The board also awarded Falkenhan a Purple Heart, given to members "who, in the course of firefighting, rescue or emergency operations, receive a grievous or life-threatening injury, through no fault of their own."

Viewings will be from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Ruhl Armory, 1035 York Road in Towson. A funeral will take place 11 a.m. Monday at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen, 5200 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. Interment will follow at Dulaney Valley Memorial Gardens.

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Computer Problem Slows Baltimore County Tally

Katie A. Brown, Baltimore County election director, says the vote-counting problems -- which have delayed results in several close council races -- were due to computer glitches, as well as human error.

The computer program that counts votes off the memory cards in voting machines kept crashing Tuesday night, so officials had to slow down, she said this morning. Each memory card takes about two minutes to upload, and there are more than 2,000 machines in the county, so uploading one memory card at a time onto the election board's computers would take about six or seven hours after polls closed.

"It got to the point where we could only do about one card at a time," she said.

Meanwhile, in four or five precincts, judges left the memory cards in the machines.

Today, election board workers are going to those precincts, including one at the Charlestown retirement community, to retrieve the memory cards and upload those votes.

"This does happen, it has happened in the past," she said. "Every election, there's a problem. There's always a precinct or two that doesn't bring back a card."

Brown expects the votes to be tallied by this afternoon, but even then they won't be official.

Even as the election board officials set out to tally the missing votes, some candidates were checking results. Shown here at the board offices are Councilman Kenneth Oliver, a Democrat from Distrct 4, and Rebecca Dongarra, a Democrat from District 1.

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Days Of 'Legal Pot' Could Be Few In Baltimore County

The Peace of Sunshine store off the main drag in Catonsville has lately been making more than half its weekly sales in K2, a "legal pot" known also as "spice." But owner Lawrence J. Zwick says he has sold his last bag. As soon as he heard Monday morning that Baltimore County might make it a crime to sell the smokable leaf, he says, he packed up his inventory of two boxes and shipped it back to the distributor.

"Oh, I'm going to miss it," said Zwick, a 44-year-old retired Coast Guard warrant officer who for four years has owned the the store specializing in T-shirts, jewelry, incense and hookahs. "But I'd rather run a legitimate business than not running a business at all."

Minutes before, Kevin Kamenetz, a member of the County Council, had wrapped up a news conference across the street announcing his plans to introduce a bill next month making it illegal to sell, distribute, possess, buy or use K2, or any product with chemical compounds that are known to mimic the effects of marijuana. The bill proposes penalties of $500 fine, 60 days in jail or both.

The potpourri-like product appeared in the United States about a year ago, and has already been banned in several states in the Midwest and across Europe. Ocean City Police Chief Bernadette A. DiPino says local shops there have been cooperating with her written request in June to voluntarily take K2 off the shelves.

The product sells in plastic bags for about $20 a gram. That's nearly six times the price of marijuana, according to Agent Donny Moses of the Baltimore Police Department.

Kamenetz, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for county executive, said K2 "has become an issue for parents in this area. … If the state is not going to act, if the federal government won't act, local government" has to step in, he said, to "protect our kids and help our parents do a better job."

A former Baltimore prosecutor, Kamenetz says he got wind of the issue recently when a Catonsville newspaper did a story about K2 being sold in the area. He couldn't say how widespread the product is in stores in the county.

Susan Flaherty of Catonsville was troubled about the newspaper article that focused on Zwick's store, especially because she has two teenage sons.

"For them to be able to go into a local shop and buy this, it's ridiculous," said Flaherty. She said as far as she knows, her sons have not tried K2 — she said they hadn't heard of it until she spoke to them to warn them away from the stuff.

Zwick, who has two children of his own, says he's been selling K2 since January, and it's gotten up to $4,000 and $5,000 a week in sales. He said the customers are from "all age ranges," and he never sells to anyone under 18.

Kamenetz emphasizes reported side effects, including racing heartbeat, high blood pressure, nausea, vomiting and headaches. He called K2 a "fairly dangerous drug."

Jessica Wehrman, a spokesman for the American Association of Poison Centers, says the country's 60 poison centers have received 1,018 calls about K2 this year. As a comparison, in 2008, the most recent year for which complete statistics are available, Wehrman says over-the-counter and prescription painkillers accounted for more than 331,000 calls.

Dr. Bruce Anderson, operations director at the Maryland Poison Center, says the center has received few calls about K2. Anderson said he was not dismissing the potential danger of K2, but he said many of the reports about the ill effects of K2 are "consistent with anxiety" reactions that could have more to do with user's psychological state than the substance itself. It's hard to know, he says, because it's hard to know what the ingredients are.

"It's not even regulated at all," said Anderson. "Who knows what it is?"

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Teen Fisherman Reports Seeing An Alligator In The Patapsco River

Weeks of relentless, steamy heat is bad enough. But tropical reptiles in the Patapsco River?

Eric Hammack Jr., 16, says he saw an alligator while fishing Sunday evening with his cousin in Patapsco Valley State Park off Belle Grove Road, not far from his home in Pumphrey in northern Anne Arundel County.

Just after 6 p.m., he said, "I heard all this splashing." He didn't see anything he could identify at first, just something swimming from the shore into the pond's deeper water.

"I thought it was a turtle or something," he said.

He left it alone, but several minutes later he saw a head pop up. Then it began swimming closer, and when it was only a few feet away, he and his cousin got a better view. "It's an alligator," he said, estimating its length at "2 or 3 feet."

Hammack said he threw a rock at it, then thought better of the idea. "I started backing away from the shore," he said.

His mother, Thea Hammack, sent out a mass e-mail message to alert members of her community association and began calling state officials. Department of Natural Resources Police Sgt. Art Windemuth said Monday afternoon that the agency is investigating.

"We probably deal with a case or two a year," DNR Police Sgt. Brian K. Albert said Monday. "Someone will go to Florida, get an alligator. They try to raise it; it gets too big, and they turn it loose."

Keeping an alligator or its cousin, the caiman, is illegal in Maryland. Last week, DNR Police seized a small caiman from a home in Frederick County and served its owner with a warning.

But you're not supposed to set them free here, either.

In 2002, residents along Seneca Creek in eastern Baltimore County reported seeing a 2- or 3-foot alligator, or more likely a caiman. For several weeks, residents had spotted it under a gazebo or swimming in the creek.

Residents tried nets. The DNR and county police officers moved in with more nets and boats, but the reptile eluded them all.

Come winter, the problem in the Patapsco — if it really is an alligator or a caiman — will solve itself. "They'll perish in wintertime conditions," Albert said. Still, if there's a reliable sighting, DNR officers will try to catch them.

"We'd hate for somebody to get bit," he said.

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7-foot-tall Elvis Statue Is Stolen From Rooftop

Elvis has left the building.

More specifically, a 7-foot-tall statue of the king appears to have been stolen from atop the Happy Day Diner in Rosedale, where he'd stood for nearly a decade.

Customers alerted owners Maria and Dimitrios Pigiaditis to the missing statue Sunday morning, and they filed a report with the Baltimore County Police. Elvis was bolted to the roof, and the thieves apparently broke him off, leaving behind part of his feet.

The couple reviewed surveillance tapes, which they have turned over to police, and saw a white van pull up overnight Wednesday, when they think the theft occurred. The diner's previous owner purchased the fiberglass statue for $1,500 in 2001 at an antique shop on Harford Road, Maria Pigiaditis said. Since then, he has only been down once, a few years ago for a "facelift" after taking a tumble during a storm.

The Pigiaditis family is keeping an eye on eBay for signs of Elvis.

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