How Safe is Your Deck? | Montgomery Community Media mymcmedia.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from mymcmedia.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The exact cause of a deck collapse at a Germantown house that sent six people to the hospital remains under investigation, but an official with the Montgomery County Department of Permitting Services said Monday the deck failed at the “ledger attachment” where the deck meets the townhouse.
“Most of these catastrophic collapses are happening at that point,” said Jeremy Schupp, who handles residential inspections and code compliance. Schupp said the deck at the Walnut Cove Circle house in Germantown was 33 years old, according to county records.
Schupp said the county has made requirements more stringent since 2018. “Instead of just being able to screw this deck to your house, we actually require through-bolts. So we actually want to see those bolts going from the outside to the inside of the house.”
By Carolyn Weber |
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Rick and Pavy Bacon are converting the detached garage behind their Silver Spring home into a secondary dwelling where Pavy’s parents will live. Photo by Michael Ventura
The detached four-car garage wasn’t what attracted Rick and Pavy Bacon to the Silver Spring home they purchased 10 years ago. In fact, they didn’t even own a car at the time. “We had a scooter,” Pavy says. What sold them was the charming bungalow style architecture of the home, a neighborhood that was near public transportation and not far from the District, and good schools for the children they hoped to have.
On Monday, Gov. Larry Hogan visited some of 500 Maryland National Guard troops deployed to Washington for the Inauguration. He was briefed by Army Brig. Gen. Janeen Birckhead, assistant adjutant general of the Maryland Guard. Birckhead is commander of the Task Force Capitol Grounds, in charge of more than 3,500 troops in D.C. Governor s Office photo
SPEAKER JONES: ‘BLACK AGENDA’ WOULD ATTACK SYSTEMIC RACISM: House Speaker Adrienne Jones (D-Baltimore County) says it’s time to dismantle the racist policies that by design have created a country where the net worth of a typical White family is 10 times higher than that of a Black family. And she plans to unveil what she is calling a “Black agenda,” one designed to attack systemic racial inequalities in housing, health, banking, government and private corporations, Ovetta Wiggins of the Post reports.