The Washington Post - 02.11.2019

B6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019

tall and 18 inches in diameter.

It was unclear, Blake said,

whether it toppled as the result of

high wind, lightning or the heavy

rain that may have saturated the

ground.

After she was extricated from

the car, Blake said, the woman

was taken to White Oak Medical

Center, where she died. Personal

details were not immediately

available.

[email protected]

The incident happened around

9:45 p.m. on Delford Avenue,

near Randolph Road, authorities

said.

Blake said the occupants of the

car “arrived home from an event;

it was raining very heavily and

they chose to sit and wait the rain

out.”

While she sat in the car, the tree

fell on the front windshield and

roof, he said, estimating that the

tree was probably about 30 feet

BY MARTIN WEIL

A woman was fatally injured

during an intense storm Thurs-

day in Montgomery County when

a tree fell on the car she was in,

the county fire department said.

The woman was a passenger in

a car that was parked on a street

in the Colesville area when the

tree fell onto the vehicle, accord-

ing to Battalion Chief Jay Blake of

the county fire department.

process, which prevented the

complaint from being tracked

and from being reviewed by su-

pervisors.

A housing investigator did vis-

it the Kennedy Street property

but photographed only the front

and could not document at-

tempts to enter. The investigator

said he visited the property three

times, but Donahue said he can

only prove one. The report says

the investigator did not enter his

observations into any formal file

and that “at no point” did he

attempt to contact Davis, who

had twice emailed the DCRA to

make sure the agency was taking

action.

One housing investigator told

auditors that a case file was made

but was lost when his office had

to move to another location.

Around the same time, a DCRA

manager was promoted, and a

field worker was moved into the

office to cull an “overwhelming

caseload.”

Cases that had been consid-

ered dormant were suspended

and later closed. Some of those

“cases” were not cases at all but

ones that had been started infor-

mally and could be shut down

without raising a flag with supe-

riors or creating a notation in any

file.

They included the rowhouse at

708 Kennedy St. NW.

[email protected]

times limited to a single inspec-

tion.

The report also says the DCRA

and the police and fire depart-

ments lacked “clear communica-

tion channels” for collaborating

and following through on hous-

ing complaints. Police have since

added directives to formalize the

way officers forward complaints

to housing and fire inspectors.

The report concludes that Offi-

cer Ernie Davis’s March 22 email

to employees at the DCRA and

the fire department about the

urgent problems he saw at 708

Kennedy St. fell into a void.

“Despite the MPD Officer’s

persistence, contacting six differ-

ent DCRA employees on five

occasions over the course of

three months, no DCRA em-

ployee ever entered the case” into

a program launched six months

earlier to track inquiries and

complaints.

Davis’s email contained a sub-

ject line of “serious code viola-

tions” and a single sentence

about a problem at an unrelated

property on 14th Street NW. The

body of the email did not men-

tion the Kennedy Street house,

though his attached police report

gave a scathing critique.

Investigators with the audit

firm spelled out in meticulous

detail how Davis’s emails trav-

eled through DCRA employees

but never made it into a formal

and authorities have not deter-

mined how the fire started,

though court documents show

they were testing a laptop com-

puter and power cord found in

Kebede’s room. Court documents

say the house was not wired to

account for its many occupants.

The fatal fire prompted an

outpouring of grief in the District

and focused attention on sub-

standard housing for the poor

and immigrants who often can-

not afford anything else. It also

raised questions about the Dis-

trict’s ability to police its housing

stock amid an influx of residents

into the rapidly gentrifying city.

An investigation by The Wash-

ington Post in September docu-

mented a series of mistakes and

miscommunications that al-

lowed the house and its owner to

escape regulatory oversight.

The audit report by the

D.C.-based firm Alvarez & Marsal

notes that there are only a dozen

housing inspectors monitoring

compliance in the District, and

none require formal training on

issues specific to the city. Instead,

the report says, new hires take a

generic course and learn by shad-

owing other inspectors, some-

said the report lays bare “painful
details” documenting “nine criti-
cal moments” when employees in
the city’s Department of Consum-
er and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA)
and the fire department could
have taken action but didn’t.
“There was an abundance of
missed opportunities,” Donahue
said. “Had one or more of those
been acted upon, we would have
had a chance to take action prior
to the fire. When the investiga-
tion into that house was closed
out, it closed out any opportunity
to identify and remediate the
problems.”
D.C. officials had put four
housing employees and two fire
officials on leave after an early
assessment of the response to the
complaint. Donahue declined
Friday to comment on their sta-
tus, but he said the report will be
used to decide whether formal
discipline is warranted.
Authorities have said a litany
of code violations in the unli-
censed rooming house, including
interior locked doors and gates,
“contributed to the deaths.” A
criminal investigation continues,

FIRE FROM B1

AVERAGE RECORD ACTUAL FORECAST

PREVIOUS YEAR NORMAL LATEST

<–10–0s 0s 10s 20s 30s 40s 50s 60s 70s 80s 90s100s110+

T-storms Rain ShowersSnow Flurries Ice Cold Front Warm FrontStationary Front

NATIONAL Today Tomorrow

High

Low

Normal

Record high

Record low

Reagan Dulles BWI

Reagan Dulles BWI

Today’s tides (High tides in Bold)

WORLD Today Tomorrow

Sources: AccuWeather.com; US Army Centralized

Allergen Extract Lab (pollen data); airnow.gov (air

quality data); National Weather Service

* AccuWeather's RealFeel Temperature®

combines over a dozen factors for an accurate

measure of how the conditions really “feel.”

Key: s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, r-rain,

shsn- showers, -snow, i-icet-thunderstorms, sf-snow flurries,

Moon Phases Solar system

NATION

OFFICIAL RECORD

Rise Set

REGION

Past 24 hours

Total this month

Normal

Total this year

Normal

Richmond

Norfolk

Ocean City

Annapolis

Dover

Cape May

Baltimore

Charlottesville

Lexington

Washington

Virginia Beach

Kitty Hawk

Harrisburg Philadelphia

Hagerstown

Davis

OCEAN:

OCEAN:

OCEAN:

OCEAN:

Temperatures

Precipitation

for the 48 contiguous states excludes Antarctica

Yesterday's National

54° 3:00 p.m.

45° 6:00 a.m.

63°/45°

86° 1974

27° 1893

52° 4:00 p.m.

42° 5:58 a.m.

63°/39°

84° 1982

25° 1975

54° 4:00 p.m.

44° 6:00 a.m.

62°/40°

86° 1950

29° 1954

Washington 12:11 a.m. 7:42 a.m. 12:53 p.m. 7:35 p.m.
Annapolis 4:19 a.m. 9:28 a.m. 3:46 p.m. 10:48 p.m.
Ocean City 5:48 a.m. 12:11 p.m. 6:53 p.m. none
Norfolk 1:50 a.m. 7:50 a.m. 2:22 p.m. 8:45 p.m.
Point Lookout 12:57 a.m. 5:42 a.m. 11:23 a.m. 6:32 p.m.

56 ° 40 ° 55 ° 38 ° 59 ° 43 ° 64 ° 44 ° 59 ° 44 ° 57 ° 37 °

Sun 7:36 a.m. 6:07 p.m.

Moon 1:10 p.m. 10:53 p.m.

Venus 9:25 a.m. 7:09 p.m.

Mars 5:52 a.m. 5:14 p.m.

Jupiter 11:10 a.m. 8:36 p.m.

Saturn 12:43 p.m. 10:14 p.m.

Nov 4

First

Quarter

Nov 12

Full

Nov 19

Last

Quarter

Nov 26

New

0.96"

Trace

0.11"

37.69"

33.63"

1.13"

0.00"

0.12"

36.22"

35.29"

0.75"

Trace

0.11"

33.46"

35.32"

Blue Ridge: Today, mostly sunny, cold. High 40–44. Wind
southwest 6–12 mph. Tonight, mostly clear, cold. Low
25–29. Wind northwest 4–8 mph. Sunday, mostly sunny,
cold. High 37–41. Wind northwest 6–12 mph. Monday,
mostly sunny. High 42–46.

Atlantic beaches: Today, mostly sunny. High 54–61. Wind
southeast 3–6 mph. Tonight, mostly clear. Low 40–48. Wind
northwest 6–12 mph. Sunday, sunny, cool. High 53–58.
Wind northwest 8–16 mph. Monday, mostly sunny. High
56–63. Wind southeast 4–8 mph.

Pollen: Low

Grass Low

Trees Low

Weeds Low

Mold Low

UV: Moderate

3 out of 11+

Air Quality: Good

Dominant cause: Particulates

60/36

61/48

55/41

55/40

55/36

54/42

55/37

57/34

57/32

60/47

62/51

54/35 54/38

53/35

47/28 56/40

61°

64°

67°

68°

Waterways: Upper Potomac River: Today, mostly sunny. Wind
southeast 5–10 knots. Waves a foot or less. Visibility mostly
unrestricted. • Lower Potomac and Chesapeake Bay: Today, mostly
sunny. Wind southeast 4–8 knots. Waves a foot or less on the
Potomac, around a foot on the Bay. Visibility unrestricted.• River
Stages: The stage at Little Falls will be 4.8 feet today, falling to 4.4
feet Sunday. Flood stage at Little Falls is 10 feet.

Albany, NY 50/34/s 50/31/pc

Albuquerque 57/32/s 64/37/s

Anchorage 44/35/c 40/30/pc

Atlanta 60/38/s 60/40/s

Austin 66/36/s 70/50/s

Baltimore 55/37/s 53/33/s

Billings, MT 45/32/pc 44/29/c

Birmingham 58/35/s 60/39/s

Bismarck, ND 45/28/c 40/26/c

Boise 50/28/s 52/31/s

Boston 52/41/s 55/38/pc

Buffalo 46/33/c 42/34/pc

Burlington, VT 49/35/pc 49/32/pc

Charleston, SC 68/44/pc 64/44/s

Charleston, WV 53/32/pc 47/28/pc

Charlotte 63/36/s 61/35/s

Cheyenne, WY 48/28/s 48/25/pc

Chicago 39/28/sf 45/38/c

Cincinnati 49/31/pc 49/34/pc

Cleveland 47/34/c 45/37/pc

Dallas 60/38/s 65/49/s

Denver 46/26/s 51/26/pc

Des Moines 46/33/pc 52/37/c

Detroit 45/32/sn 45/35/c

El Paso 63/42/pc 71/49/pc

Fairbanks, AK 23/11/sf 21/6/s

Fargo, ND 41/25/pc 41/27/c

Hartford, CT 53/33/s 55/28/s

Honolulu 86/72/s 85/73/pc

Houston 66/42/s 67/49/s

Indianapolis 45/30/pc 49/38/pc

Jackson, MS 60/35/s 61/36/s

Jacksonville, FL 69/48/sh 70/57/s

Kansas City, MO 50/35/pc 57/38/s

Las Vegas 72/48/s 76/51/s

Little Rock 57/33/s 59/36/s

Los Angeles 84/56/s 79/54/s

Louisville 52/32/pc 53/36/s

Memphis 55/34/s 58/38/s

Miami 88/74/pc 86/75/pc

Milwaukee 40/28/pc 44/37/c

Minneapolis 40/30/pc 46/33/c

Nashville 56/30/s 56/34/s

New Orleans 63/48/s 63/48/pc

New York City 52/40/s 53/37/s

Norfolk 61/48/pc 58/43/s

Oklahoma City 55/34/s 62/37/s

Omaha 50/36/pc 53/38/pc

Orlando 84/63/sh 80/68/pc

Philadelphia 54/38/s 53/35/s

Phoenix 85/60/s 85/57/s

Pittsburgh 49/30/pc 44/28/pc

Portland, ME 48/34/s 53/32/s

Portland, OR 60/38/s 59/41/pc

Providence, RI 51/37/s 55/32/s

Raleigh, NC 63/37/s 59/35/s

Reno, NV 65/33/s 69/36/s

Richmond 60/36/s 56/34/s

Sacramento 76/40/s 78/41/s

St. Louis 50/33/pc 57/42/s

St. Thomas, VI 87/77/pc 88/78/pc

Salt Lake City 50/31/s 55/35/s

San Diego 76/52/s 73/52/s

San Francisco 73/49/s 70/49/s

San Juan, PR 85/75/pc 86/76/pc

Seattle 55/41/pc 56/44/pc

Spokane, WA 46/29/s 47/30/pc

Syracuse 51/35/pc 47/32/c

Tampa 81/61/pc 79/68/pc

Wichita 55/34/s 61/35/s

Addis Ababa 77/50/pc 76/48/s

Amsterdam 58/46/r 54/45/sh

Athens 69/55/c 70/65/pc

Auckland 65/55/s 69/56/c

Baghdad 83/59/s 84/61/s

Bangkok 87/77/t 90/77/t

Beijing 57/47/r 59/37/pc

Berlin 59/48/sh 56/46/pc

Bogota 65/50/sh 66/49/sh

Brussels 58/46/r 54/46/sh

Buenos Aires 79/58/pc 72/63/s

Cairo 86/68/s 85/67/s

Caracas 74/65/pc 73/65/pc

Copenhagen 54/50/sh 53/47/sh

Dakar 89/78/s 88/79/s

Dublin 51/40/r 52/42/sh

Edinburgh 54/45/sh 53/43/sh

Frankfurt 61/50/r 55/47/sh

Geneva 60/49/sh 54/46/r

Ham., Bermuda 78/69/pc 78/70/c

Helsinki 41/34/sn 39/31/pc

Ho Chi Minh City 88/75/t 87/75/t

Hong Kong 84/74/pc 85/72/s

Islamabad 82/59/pc 80/57/s

Istanbul 62/49/s 65/59/s

Jerusalem 69/56/s 72/56/s

Johannesburg 74/57/t 84/62/pc

Kabul 62/43/s 63/38/s

Kingston, Jam. 87/75/pc 88/76/pc

Kolkata 89/71/pc 88/71/pc

Lagos 85/76/t 82/76/t

Lima 68/61/pc 68/61/pc

Lisbon 68/60/sh 66/58/pc

London 56/46/r 56/45/sh

Madrid 66/53/c 62/50/sh

Manila 88/78/c 90/79/t

Mexico City 68/53/t 68/53/t

Montreal 44/36/c 45/32/pc

Moscow 36/32/c 40/38/sh

Mumbai 89/77/t 89/79/pc

Nairobi 78/56/pc 78/59/pc

New Delhi 88/71/pc 84/67/pc

Oslo 38/30/pc 35/29/c

Ottawa 43/33/c 44/29/pc

Paris 57/48/r 53/48/r

Prague 57/43/sh 53/45/sh

Rio de Janeiro 85/71/s 89/77/s

Riyadh 91/70/s 95/71/s

Rome 71/60/t 73/58/r

San Salvador 86/67/pc 86/67/t

Santiago 84/50/s 81/47/pc

Sarajevo 61/51/t 63/53/t

Seoul 66/45/pc 68/46/s

Shanghai 74/60/pc 74/57/pc

Singapore 88/77/t 88/78/c

Stockholm 43/34/pc 39/33/sh

Sydney 81/69/c 81/64/t

Taipei City 83/73/pc 79/70/pc

Tehran 67/50/s 67/48/s

Tokyo 65/56/s 64/57/r

Toronto 45/33/sn 44/33/pc

Vienna 54/47/pc 66/50/sh

Warsaw 48/43/pc 59/52/pc

Today

Mostly sunny

Sunday

Mostly sunny,

breezy

Monday

Mostly sunny

Tuesday

Mostly sunny

Wednesday

Partly sunny

Thursday

Partly sunny

MTuWTh F SaSuMTuWTh F SaSuM

through 5 p.m.yesterday

Difference from 30–yr. avg. (Reagan): this month: –4.9° yr. to date: +3.0°

High: Miami, FL 91°

Low: Boulder, WY –15°

World

High: Oodnadatta, Australia 108°

Low: Summit Station, Greenland –36°

Weather map features for noon today.

WIND:SSE 4–8 mph

HUMIDITY:Moderate

CHNCE PRECIP:5%

FEELS*:58°

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:50°

WNW 10–20 mph

Moderate

5%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:57°

S 6–12 mph

Moderate

5%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:66°

WSW 4–8 mph

Moderate

10%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:59°

NW 6–12 mph

Moderate

25%

W:

H:

P:

FEELS:54°

NW 7–14 mph

Moderate

20%

A turn toward seasonal norms

Sunny and less breezy conditions
will make high temperatures in the
mid- to upper 50s feel a bit more
comfortable. Temperatures are still
below average, feeling closer to later
November, but they no longer feel quite like
December. Southerly breezes top out at about
10 mph. Overnight, low temperatures in the 30s
to near 40 downtown are again possible for the
region, and north and west of town may get just
below the freezing mark. A few clouds and a west-
northwest breeze may persist.

The Weather

WASHINGTONPOST.COM/WEATHER. TWITTER: @CAPITALWEATHER. FACEBOOK.COM/CAPITALWEATHER

BY DANA HEDGPETH

A message indicating the pres-

ence of an active shooter Friday

morning at a Montgomery College

campus was sent in error, authori-

ties said.

The message, sent at 7:42 a.m.

via text message and social media,

said: “EMERGENCY! Active

shooter at [insert campus] Cam-

pus. LOCK DOWN NOW. Go to

nearest room and lock door! Fol-

low instructions from authori-

ties.”

But Montgomery County police

and officials at Montgomery Col-

lege said there was never a threat.

Marcus Rosano, a spokesman for

Montgomery College, called it a

“false alarm.”

The alert caused panic, confu-

sion and frustration online as peo-

ple tried to determine whether it

was real. Officials said the mes-

sage was sent to about 46,200 peo-

ple, including those who are

signed up for text message alerts

and follow the college on Face-

book and Twitter.

The tweet was removed about

25 minutes later. At 8:11 a.m., a

new tweet was posted that read:

“There is NO THREAT. The ‘active

shooter’ message was sent in ER-

ROR.... We apologize for the erro-

neous message.”

Rosano said the false alarm re-

sulted from “human error” and

was “an honest mistake.”

He said the college’s public safe-

ty office was testing the college’s

alert messaging system when the

message was sent.

“We need to do better,” Rosano

said. “We need to train more.”

He said college officials take

safety seriously and worry that a

mistake “could jeopardize the way

our students feel when they come

to campus.” In a real emergency,

he said, “we want people to under-

stand this is serious business, and

it’s a real alert.”

In August, a similar error oc-

curred at George Mason Univer-

sity. Officials later said the mes-

sage was “inadvertently sent by a

software vendor” that handles the

university’s emergency notifica-

tion system.

[email protected]

MARYLAND

Montgomery College alert

was in error, o∞cials say

JAHI CHIKWENDIU/THE WASHINGTON POST

Report: Agency mishandled

warning about house

Wilder Cordeno, a worker with
Cortez’s Landscaping Service,
cuts apart a fallen tree on Pony
Lane in Reston, Va. A cold front
sparked a line of severe
thunderstorms that moved
through the Washington area
overnight Thursday, causing
flooding, high winds and
widespread power outages from
downed trees and power lines.

MARYLAND

Woman dies after tree topples onto car during storm

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