Fire Extinguishers

Upper Southampton police were searching for vandals who broke into the Stackpole Elementary School early Thursday and sprayed the building and several vehicles in the neighborhood with three stolen fire extinguishers. The building was entered sometime between 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and 2 a.m. Thursday, when a door window on the west side of the building at Strathman Avenue was smashed. Three dry-powder fire extinguishers were removed, according to Upper Southampton Police Chief Walter Stevens.

One or more vandals trashed Cherry Hill High School West last weekend, setting off fire extinguishers and flooding the H wing with water, police said. In addition, they said, a computer monitor and printer were thrown to the floor in a chemistry lab. On another computer, "Have a Nice Day!" was typed and displayed. Police said they believed the vandalism, reported Sunday morning, occurred between 7 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. Sunday. According to a police report, it was unclear how the vandal or vandals entered the building, although a door was found opened in the breezeway connecting the E and D wings.

Forty students from the Orchard Valley Middle School and two school bus drivers were briefly hospitalized yesterday after they experienced nausea and dizziness while riding on school buses that had been sprayed by vandals with foam from fire extinguishers. Fred DeLia, the township's director of emergency management, said the students and drivers were treated at Kennedy Memorial Hospitals-Washington Division and released. He added that an employee at the township school district's fenced-in bus lot, at Ganttown Road and Hurffville-Cross Keys Road, called police about 3:30 a.m. after spotting three juveniles climbing over a fence and leaving the lot. A search showed that vandals had removed the fire extingushers on seven or eight buses and sprayed the powdery chemical inside the vehicles.

A fire termed suspicious by local authorities broke out yesterday in a fourth-floor paper storage area at Chester High School, injuring three people and canceling classes for the day. City Fire Chief Willie Hatcher said the fire was reported at 11:13 a.m. and was under control by 11:57 a.m. Two school security guards were overcome by smoke, Hatcher said, and a clerical worker bruised her leg when she fell as the building was being evacuated....

Thousands of volunteers carried fire extinguishers through the streets and police helicopters thundered overhead as the city used its ground and air defenses against Devil's Night arsonists last night. Officials imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew to clear the streets of youths under age 18 and to minimize the fires that have besieged the city on the eve of Halloween for the last seven years. Fluorescent green firetrucks patrolled many neighborhoods. By 10 p.m., 31 juveniles had been arrested for violating curfew, said Bob Berg, a spokesman for Mayor Coleman Young.

King Terrace residents, most of them elderly and some handicapped, have been battling a schizophrenic heating system that last month had some huddled beneath blankets while others had their air conditioners running full blast. The heater and a list of other tenant complaints have concerned - and frustrated - the Housing Authority of Chester County, which owns the building in Phoenixville, executive director Frederick Brown said. Brown was one of more than 10 housing authority officials who attended a meeting Friday at the federally financed, 50-unit building on High Street.

The owner of a Morton apartment complex has been ordered to clean up his property and comply with borough fire regulations, Borough Secretary Irene Spencer said last week. Robert Cohen, who owns the two-building Cornerstone Apartments complex on Amosland Road, must repair structural damage to basement units, install smoke detectors in some areas of the buildings, and replace fire extinguishers that do not work and missing ceiling tiles, Spencer said. Cohen also must obtain certificates of occupancy for some of the apartments.

The Citizens Crime Commission and a private donor are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals who plundered Neshaminy High School with baseball bats and crowbars. Authorities estimated damage at $50,000 to $100,000 as the thugs shattered trophy cases, printers, copiers, computers - anything they could get their hands on. One official described the scene inside the school as looking as though "a bomb went off. " More than two dozen buses were also broken into and spray-painted, and fire extinguishers were set off. Water fountains were pulled from the walls, and the broken pipes flooded into one of the school's gyms, causing extensive damage, authorities said.

Con man Donald Dargan told the judge he posed as a city inspector to cheat small store owners out of money because he was hooked on drugs. "I never thought about doing anything violent," Dargan, 30, told Common Pleas Judge Gene D. Cohen yesterday before being sentenced to two to four years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $823. "This defendant is dishonest and manipulative," said the judge, citing Dargan's criminal record of 16 arrests and eight convictions. Assistant District Attorney Laurie Jubelirer told Cohen that Dargan, of Dorrance Street near Morris, posed as a Licenses & Inspections Department inspector to swindle merchants in Center City and South Philadelphia out of small amounts of money last year.

Arson is suspected as the cause of a fire at the Toys R Us store in Cheltenham Square mall that caused the busy store to be evacuated, a fire official said yesterday. "It was deliberately set," said Bud Carlson, assistant fire marshal. The fire began after 7 p.m. Tuesday in an aisle of towels and baby items and was moving into the ceiling, Carlson said, when a Cheltenham police officer rushed to the flames with two fire extinguishers. The officer, Cpl. John Adams, nearly put out the fire by himself, Carlson said, with the help of the store manager who furnished additional extinquishers.

Despite pleas from the church earlier in the day, the city's Department of Licenses and Inspection on Tuesday ordered the shutdown of a homeless shelter operating without permits at Hope Outreach United Church of Christ in Kensington. "It's clear what should be done here," said L&I commissioner Fran Burns. "We have to enforce building, zoning, and fire codes. " But Hope's pastor, the Rev. Deborah Savage, responded by calling for an all-night prayer vigil in the sanctuary where 15 to 25 homeless men have slept each night since the fall.

Philadelphia's public schools are crumbling and suffer from fire and safety hazards ranging from locked fire doors to inoperable fire extinguishers and ventilation systems, City Controller Alan Butkovitz said in a report released yesterday. Butkovitz, an outspoken critic of the district, visited 19 schools that he said were representative of all 300 district buildings. He identified $15 million in "hazardous" conditions he said should be fixed right away. The controller completed a similar report two years ago, and said there had been no improvement since then.

Fifty years ago, Steve McQueen stood in Chester County and uttered an uncanny warning about global warming in his first lead movie role in The Blob. He cautioned the world was safe from the Blob "as long as the Arctic stays cold. " Who knew McQueen would beat Al Gore to the punch? This coming weekend, the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville pays tribute to the 50th anniversary of the 1957 filming of the movie with Blobfest activities centered on the theme "An Inconvenient Blob," a play on the title of Gore's popular 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Is junk mail recyclable? Must newspapers be bagged, and in what kind of bag? Which day do the trucks come? Some questions can actually be answered. Philadelphia   (215-685-7329). Bucks County   (215-345-3400). Chester County   (800-626-0067). Delaware County   (610-892-9627). Montgomery County   (610-278-3618). Burlington County   (609-499-1001). Camden County   (856-858-5241)

If you had to be evacuated from your home due to a hazardous chemical emergency, yesterday's clear spring weather provided a good day for it. Dozens of residents of the 2100 block of East Monmouth Street in Kensington were temporarily displaced from their homes and forced to stand outside a safe distance away for about a half hour after a city sanitation worker and two nearby parked cars were exposed to the fumes from a discarded fire extinguisher, police...

Serena Williams yesterday dropped out of the top 10 in the WTA Tour rankings for the first time in nearly 5 years, and French Open champion Gaston Gaudio jumped 34 spots to a career-high No. 10 in the ATP Tour rankings. Williams fell from seventh to 11th in the rankings, her lowest placing since August 1999. She was No. 1 as recently as Aug. 4, 3 days after she had knee surgery and the last of her 57 straight weeks at the top thanks to winning four straight Grand Slam titles. Gaudio became the third unseeded French Open champion, and his previous ranking of 44th was the fourth lowest for a major titlist.

The Citizens Crime Commission and a private donor are offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the vandals who plundered Neshaminy High School with baseball bats and crowbars. Authorities estimated damage at $50,000 to $100,000 as the thugs shattered trophy cases, printers, copiers, computers - anything they could get their hands on. One official described the scene inside the school as looking as though "a bomb went off. " More than two dozen buses were also broken into and spray-painted, and fire extinguishers were set off. Water fountains were pulled from the walls, and the broken pipes flooded into one of the school's gyms, causing extensive damage, authorities said.

A few surprises always appear with the mercury, motor oil, road flares and batteries among the million-plus pounds of residential hazardous waste collected every year in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Some are collectible. Some are bizarre. Some are even lethal. "That's really the only constant in this kind of waste collection," Raymond Masser, Montgomery County recycling coordinator, said. "We always look for things we didn't expect. " For the last four years, a partnership of Philadelphia, Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties has sponsored collection days.

Investigators zeroed in yesterday on a roofer's torch as a possible cause of the three-alarm fire that burned through an apartment building, leaving about 50 people homeless. Mike Reed, Burlington County's assistant fire marshal, said three workers from Goralski Roofing in Cinnaminson had been using a propane flame on the roof of the building at the Village of Stoney Run where the fire broke out Monday afternoon. The workers reported that they had "discovered" the fire, he said.

Former NBA forward Dennis Rodman has gotten on the bad side of Newport Beach, Calif., police again, this time for allegedly spraying a restaurant full of people with a fire extinguisher. "It appeared that someone had said something that he didn't like," police Lt. Doug Fletcher said of Sunday's incident at a Hooters in this beachfront city. Witnesses told police Rodman entered the restaurant about 5:45 p.m. carrying a fire extinguisher. He didn't appear to be intoxicated, Fletcher said.