Crews

Washington Township, Pa., crews on Monday received authorization to clean up debris outside the designated boundaries of a junkyard on Pa. 316 South. The township supervisors voted Monday to fine junkyard owner Bruce Neibert $500 a day for violating the agreement under which refuse must be kept behind his treeline. They said township crews will clean up the area. The supervisors criticized him after looking at pictures that show items along his driveway. They already denied Neibert's 2013 permit application based on the same reasons.

Leitersburg Pike (Md. 60) near Bluegrass Drive has been closed to traffic while emergency crews remove electrical wires that fell on the roadway at about 1 p.m. today, a Washington County Emergency Services dispatcher said. Further details were not immediately available.

Emergency crews from Washington County and Jefferson County, W.Va. were dispatched to a water rescue on the Shenandoah River near Harpers Ferry Sunday night, dispatchers from both counties said. The call went out at 9:04 p.m., a Jefferson County Emergency Services dispatcher said, but she had no other information as of about 9:50 p.m. A woman at the Friendship Fire Co. in Harpers Ferry acknowledged that units had gone out to on the call, but also had no additional information.

Patchwork on multiple streets around the Hagerstown will begin Tuesday at 7 a.m., according to a press release from the City of Hagerstown. Work crews from Craig Paving, Inc. will begin working on Wesel Boulevard, South Burhans Boulevard, Maryland Avenue, and Salem Avenue. The work will require excavation and removal of the current pavement and adding new pavement to the road. Lanes will close at various times at each location while the work is going on. Emergency vehicles will be able to pass through the work zones, but motorists should expect delays in an area where a lane might be closed.

The Maryland State Highway Administration has work crews prepared for the weekend in case of any inclement weather, but nothing has been mobilized in or near Washington County yet, according to SHA Spokesman Charlie Gischlar. "There is a chance of snow flurries on Sunday, but that is still two to three days out," he said. "The temperature is supposed to decrease dramatically this weekend. " According to the National Weather Service's website, http://forecast.weather.gov , the high in Hagerstown on Friday was expected to be near 54 degrees with winds between 18 and 22 miles per hour and gusts as high as 33 mph. A low of 32 degrees is expected Friday night.

Construction has begun at the site of a new Sonic drive-in restaurant on Dual Highway near Edgewood Drive in Hagerstown. Crews broke ground March 16 at 1710 Dual Highway, with plans of opening by mid-May, a Sonic franchise official said Monday. Nick Stamnos, director of operations, said a job fair is planned for April 21 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. in a conference room at the Hampton Inn, 1716 Dual Highway, just behind the construction site. The company seeks to hire 80 or more entry-level positions, including cooks, skating carhops, drive-through workers and switchboard operators, Stamnos said.

HALFWAY - A suspicious package containing an unidentified brown liquid forced crews to don hazmats suits in a parking lot outside Lenox Distribution Center late Thursday. According to Ed Ernst, deputy chief of Volunteer Fire Department of Halfway, the crews were notified of the situation at about 8:30 p.m. Ernst said "it's a brown liquid that we don't have a clue what it is. " The container included writing in either Chinese or Japanese, Ernst said. It was about six inches long and four inches high, he said.

Several local emergency crews responded Saturday to a house fire at 11183 Big Pool Road. In an email, Clear Spring Volunteer Fire Company Chief Michael L. Reid wrote that the two-story home was a complete loss. He wrote that the fire started in a clothes dryer. Five people in Steven Wood's family lived there, Reid wrote. The fire company posted a photo of the destroyed house on its Facebook page and asked if the community could help the two men, two women and 3-year-old boy who lived there.

SMITHSBURG - Firefighters fought a chimney and attic fire in a home near the Frederick County, Md., line for 75 minutes Sunday morning before containing it. A Washington County 911 center spokesman said crews were dispatched at 9:30 a.m. to 9542 Crystal Falls Drive for the fire. David Shoop, of the Mt. Aetna Volunteer Fire Department, said the fire started in the chimney of the home and extended into the walls. Shoop said no one was injured in the blaze, and the owners of the home, whom he did not identify, were not displaced.

WAYNESBORO, PA. -- Dennis Benshoff gives up sleep so morning commuters can rest easier. When snow is in the forecast, Benshoff - the Borough of Waynesboro's maintenance supervisor - wakes almost every hour to check whether the precipitation has actually arrived. And once it does, he's off to the salt shed so snowplows can get onto the most traveled streets before passenger vehicles do. "When they call for snow, you don't sleep well that night," he said. Plows and anti-skid materials were on Waynesboro roads shortly after 5 a.m. Tuesday.

Fire crews from four counties in Maryland and Pennsylvania battled a house fire Saturday night in the 14600 block of Pennersville Road off MacFee Hill Road, a Washington County Emergency Services supervisor said. The call for the fire at 14627 Pennersville Road went out at 8:46 p.m., and units from fire departments from Washington and Frederick counties in Maryland as well as Franklin and Adams counties in Pennsylvania responded, the supervisor said. Pennsylvania fire units from Waynesboro and Blue Ridge Summit were called to the fire only minutes after the initial call, according to a Franklin County Emergency Services dispatcher.

In preparation for a winter storm that was expected to move into the Tri-State area Tuesday evening, road crews were pre-treating the roads, plow trucks were positioned in key locations, and utility workers from three companies in Ohio were on the way to the area.  The Maryland State Highway Administration on Tuesday was pre-treating secondary roads in Washington County, including Maryland and U.S. numbered routes, with salt brine, according to...

Washington Township, Pa., crews on Monday received authorization to clean up debris outside the designated boundaries of a junkyard on Pa. 316 South. The township supervisors voted Monday to fine junkyard owner Bruce Neibert $500 a day for violating the agreement under which refuse must be kept behind his treeline. They said township crews will clean up the area. The supervisors criticized him after looking at pictures that show items along his driveway. They already denied Neibert's 2013 permit application based on the same reasons.

A wintry mix of sleet, freezing rain and rain fell across Washington County on Monday morning, sending out road crews and prompting school systems to close or delay classes. The National Weather Service has issued a winter weather advisory for Washington County and surrounding counties. The temperature had moved just above freezing, at 32.4 degrees, by 10:42 a.m., according to the website of Hagerstown weather observer Greg Keefer at http://i4weather.net . By 10:42 a.m., .21 of an inch of precipitation, had fallen since the weather system moved in to the area, the website shows.

Several local emergency crews responded Saturday to a house fire at 11183 Big Pool Road. In an email, Clear Spring Volunteer Fire Company Chief Michael L. Reid wrote that the two-story home was a complete loss. He wrote that the fire started in a clothes dryer. Five people in Steven Wood's family lived there, Reid wrote. The fire company posted a photo of the destroyed house on its Facebook page and asked if the community could help the two men, two women and 3-year-old boy who lived there.

The project to reconstruct and widen the I-70 bridges over Md. 63, also known as Greencastle Pike, will begin this month, according to an emailed release from the Maryland State Highway Administration. Crews will widen the bridges by more than 51 feet in each direction, and will consist of two traffic lanes with a wide inner shoulder, according to the release. Traffic will be shifted to the outer sides of the bridges while crews work on the inner portions, and it will be shifted to the inside while crews work on the outer portions.

The Borough of Chambersburg's highway, streets and utility crew workers have agreed to a wage freeze for 2013, while negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement continue, according to a news release from the municipality. They are the third group of borough workers to have a wage freeze - uniformed members of the Chambersburg Police Department had a year with no wage increase in 2011 and non-bargaining employees like secretaries and managers had no increase in 2012, the news release stated.

The bridges near Jersey City looked small because the rivers and bays were so swollen with water. The neighborhoods of the normally bustling city were eerily quiet because of a night-time curfew. Many residents were running out of their medications. These were the scenes that greeted emergency personnel from Washington County who were sent to New Jersey to help those affected by Superstorm Sandy. Five members of the Community Rescue Service returned to Washington County about noon Friday and were greeted with pizza, cake and hugs from colleagues and family members at their station on Eastern Boulevard.

Having been spared the worst of Hurricane Sandy, ambulance and state highway crews from Washington County have been deployed to harder hit areas, including the New Jersey shore and snowbound Garrett County in Maryland. Two ambulance strike teams arrived Thursday at the Atlantic County Training Center in Egg Harbor Township, N.J., according to a Thursday email from Capt. Jeremy Mackrell of Community Rescue Service. They were then redeployed to Northern New Jersey where their base of operations in Rutherford, N.J., Mackrell wrote.