Basement

Philadelphia stakeout officer James Berghaier won his share of headlines in the 1985 MOVE confrontation for rescuing a child from the mayhem - 13-year-old Birdie Africa. The heroics came at a price. The events of that day severely traumatized Berghaier, then 36, who eventually left police work, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The morning of May 13, Berghaier and other officers were to enter 6219 and 6223 Osage Ave., the rowhouses to either side of 6221, open holes in the basement and the second-floor party walls, and insert pepper gas to force the seven adults and six children from the house.

Learning that the Defense Department may have stored away $30 billion worth of things it doesn't need made me feel a lot better about my basement. We don't have anywhere near $30 billion worth of stuff down there. In fact, according to the lowest estimate - that would be my wife's - what we have in our basement has no monetary value at all. She didn't actually prepare a formal estimate with hard numbers; I've put them together by extrapolation from the phrase "a bunch of worthless junk.

A fire in a basement storage room caused the evacuation of 23 apartments at the Forge Gate complex on Snyder Road in Towamencin Township on Wednesday night. Damage was limited to Building D of the five-building complex and was estimated at $20,000. One resident was treated at the scene for minor smoke inhalation. The storage room was "gutted," said Towamencin Fire Chief Christopher Bohmueller. A laundry room in the basement also sustained heavy heat and smoke damage. The seven apartments on the first floor sustained heat damage, Bohmeuller said, and all 23 apartments in the building sustained smoke damage.

The strange phone calls about a body in a South Philadelphia house started coming in at the Roundhouse about 6:30 last night, Homicide Lt. Joseph Witte said. After the third or fourth call, detectives went to a rowhouse on Cleveland Street near Fitzwater, talked to the tenants who had moved in just a few months ago, and got permission from them and the owner to dig up the cement basement floor. "We dug down about 20 inches before we found the bones," Witte said. The unidentified skeletal remains - possibly those of a woman - were discovered wrapped in a sheet, just where the caller said they would be, Witte said.

In a brief meeting Monday, the Lower Merion Planning Commission recommended approving the conversion of a basement to an apartment in the Yorklynne Manor Condominiums at 465-471 City Ave., even though the proposal has yet to win authorization from the Zoning Hearing Board. Commission members John C. Donlevie, William H. Loesche, Davis Pearson and Francis J. Travascio voted in favor of the proposal. James Greenfield, Harry G. Rieger and Eleanor W. Winsor voted against it. A request for permission to expand the number of units on the lot is pending before the zoning board.

The Warrington Zoning Hearing Board has approved Benjamin Grove's proposal to work out of the basement of his Pickertown Road home. The fire-equipment repairer received an exception Monday night to convert his basement into an office, said township manager Stanley Gawel. The board approved the conversion, 3-0, but limited Grove to paper and telephone work. Grove assured the board that he does all repairs at the fire departments that hire him, Gawel said. The zoning board made short work of the rest of its agenda Monday, continuing two requests for a special exception, Gawel said.

Anyone worried about basement flooding might find useful some tips from New Jersey utility PSE&G. Customers of other gas and electric providers should contact their utility company as needed. Peco, which serves Southeastern Pennsylvania, can be reached for non-emergencies at 1-800-494-4000 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday), or for emergencies, including outages, at 1-800-841-4141 round-the-clock. Online reporting, including through mobile devices, is available through www.peco.

Winter has finally arrived and many of us are spending a lot more time indoors. In this part of the country, that means migrating down to the basement. Whether your basement is used mainly as a place to store "stuff" or a place to store kids, it likely reveals your family's true personality. Upstairs might be the face we show to the public, but down below the designer kitchen anything goes. The most desirable basements, in my continuing informal survey of how people live, are those maintained by older, retired couples.

My basement has become a living history museum. Pieces of my life story are scattered among dusty boxes, plastic containers, and shelves laden with the fallout of 40 years of accumulated stuff. The exhibits in this museum have moved to three locations during that time. My basement also happens to be an archive for my children's life stories. It slowly evolved into a storehouse for special toys from days gone by, an assortment of outgrown beds, and books ranging from easy readers purchased at school book fairs to outdated college textbooks that my girls just couldn't part with.

Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti was killed after she questioned the competence of the exterminator sent to rid her rowhouse of mice. That's what Jason Smith - who allegedly strangled Ketunuti - told detectives in a teary five-page Jan. 24 confession. Smith's statement was read Wednesday at a preliminary hearing where Smith was held for trial on murder, arson, and related charges by Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni. "She said that I shouldn't be an exterminator, that I didn't know what I was doing," said Smith, 37, of Levittown, in a statement read by homicide detective Edward Tolliver.

Louis W. Yellin, an enterprising businessman who started in the 1960s with a used press in the basement of his parents' Philadelphia grocery and built a busy South Jersey printing and graphics firm, died Wednesday, April 3, at his Mount Laurel home. He was 71 and had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. With his wife, Annette, Mr. Yellin took A.E. Litho Group from its subterranean beginnings in the city's Tacony section, over the Delaware and into a roomier facility in Riverside.

'YOU DON'T TALK to 'em . . . You plant 'em!" Larry "The Rock" Zeidel is standing over me now, fists clenched, his mammoth knuckles inches from my face. Four months ago, he was lying pale-faced in the intensive-care ward of Bryn Mawr Hospital, his legs swollen and blackened from a congestive heart condition worsened over the years by a lack of medical insurance. But there is little hint of that man now. Now it is easy to understand why he has ignored those health problems, why he has in the past refused or flatly not sought health insurance provided by the Social Security he collects in his advanced age. At 85, more than 4 decades removed from his last days as a stick-wielding hockey enforcer, Larry Zeidel lives most of his waking hours still inside that character, rambling on in no apparent chronological order about a modest heyday that he surrendered so much of his life to obtain.

A Bucks County exterminator has been held for trial on murder charges in the January strangulation of Philadelphia pediatrician Melissa Ketunuti. Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Teresa Carr Deni ordered Jason Smith, 37, of Levittown, to stand trial on a general count of murder, arson and related charges in the Jan. 21 death of Ketunuti, a pediatrician and researcher at Philadelphia's Children's Hospital. The body of Ketunuti, 35, was found on fire in the basement of her Graduate Hospital-area rowhouse by a dog walker who arrived to walk Ketunuti's dog. Philadelphia Police Homicide Det. Henry Glenn testified that Ketunuti was wearing riding boots and her hands had been bound behind her with a leather strap from horse gear.

A quick-acting Philadelphia detective caught two suspects who allegedly pistol-whipped and robbed a 58-year-old man late Friday afternoon in Chinatown, police said. Around 5:30 p.m., the man was attacked inside a rental property he owns in the 1200 block of Vine Street, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives. The victim was forced into the basement, where he was beaten with a .357 caliber pistol and forced to strip to his underwear. Detective Rob Conway was driving down Vine Street returning from an investigation when he spotted the victim, who was outside and screaming for help.

Question: Our 1920s Colonial has a stone foundation with some sort of cement coating on the interior. Much of the coating has flaked off, exposing the mortar joints, which are disintegrating. We recently had a sump pump and French drain installed in the basement, which will eliminate much of the dampness from minor water leaks. What would be the best process to re-coat the interior walls of the foundation? Answer: It's nostalgia time, and to answer the question, I return to the basement of another of my houses, which had a stone foundation and something that perpetually flaked off the walls.

The passion for collecting can be a happy diversion. It also can quickly turn into a space invader. And when you happen to own what is believed to be the largest private sheet-music collection in the world, as Sandy Marrone does, space becomes an overwhelming challenge. It all began 38 years ago, when Marrone was seeking a diversion beyond her work as a photojournalist for Penn Mutual in Philadelphia and as a new mother. She had energy to spare. Soon, passion turned into magnificent obsession, as the sheet-music collection morphed into a thriving business, with collectors flocking to her. Five years ago, when Sandy and her husband, Dennis, looked around at their two-story house in the Cinnamon Hill section of Cinnaminson, one word flashed: "Basement!"

Federal authorities on Wednesday presented a racketeering indictment against a Philadelphia woman who allegedly enslaved mentally disabled adults to steal their benefit checks, adding hate-crime and murder charges that could expose her to the death penalty. The crimes alleged in the 196-count indictment against Linda Ann Weston and four others include much of the depravity and sadism that emerged when police found the dirty, emaciated victims locked in a Tacony basement in October 2011.

NEWTOWN, Conn. - As the nation paused to mark a week since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School, new details emerged about the gunman, Adam Lanza, who acquaintances said was able to take apart and reassemble a computer in a matter of minutes but rarely spoke to anyone. In high school, Lanza used to slither through the hallways, awkwardly pressing himself against the wall while wearing the same green shirt and khaki pants every day. He hardly ever talked to classmates and once gave a presentation entirely by computer, never uttering a single word.

STEVE OLESZEK eyed the steady stream of water pooling in front of his Southwest Center City rowhouse July 22 and tried to think positive thoughts. "Well, it stopped at the curb at first," he said, "so I naively thought, 'I'll be fine.' " But then the sidewalk started to buckle, and his basement began to fill with water. What Oleszek, 60, didn't know at that moment was that a 48-inch water main had cracked open at 21st and Bainbridge streets, a block south of his home on Kater Street.