Three weeks ago, it felt like an ordinary spring afternoon. I was in my third-floor perch trying to cut 200 words from an article, looking forward to a late walk up Roland Avenue.
All of a sudden, a concussive bang sounded as if two dump trucks had collided. My husband rushed outdoors. In a few minutes I joined him. Five or six police officers were in the street, and a smashed car sat by our neighbors' house closest to the Roland Avenue corner. "He went up the alley," one officer shouted.
Soon, another officer was crossing the back lawn of the Woman's Club of Roland Park. With him was a man in handcuffs. We quickly learned that officers from the Western District had followed a suspect who was driving a speeding car across Northern Parkway. An officer said he knew that when the car turned onto Roland Avenue, the driver might lose control. The police backed off but still followed the car. It appeared from the number of police cars that Northern District police had responded, too.
Fortunately, schools had been dismissed for more than an hour. No accident occurred near the schools. The car did go out of control, smashed into the new bench at the corner of Roland and Cold Spring Lane then knocked down the tall streetlight, so it blocked the intersection of Ridgewood and covered the street in broken glass and plastic.
Neighbors from Roland Avenue joined us at the corner to survey the damage. Our next-door neighbor told us that the out-of-control car had narrowly missed hitting her. She had been watering the grass seed she had planted after one of the new bio-retention pits installed by the city had failed and was removed.
When we spotted an officer searching the back garden of the Woman's Club, he said he was looking for a gun or drugs, or both. He thought he had seen the suspect throw something up on the second-floor porch. My husband went to our garage for a ladder, but it was not tall enough.
I ran up Roland Avenue to a friend who has the key to the Woman's Club. She opened the club door, and the officer went upstairs to the second-floor porch. In a few minutes, he returned with a plastic bag in his hand. The suspect remained in handcuffs, seated on the curbside grass.
With the force of the hit and reported speed of the car, it is a miracle no one was injured or killed that Thursday afternoon, especially our neighbor out watering. The officers handled everything with diligence and concern for the safety of Roland Avenue drivers and residents, for our neighbor almost hit, and for the property searched. Days later we learned from another neighbor that one of the officers had drawn a gun or a Taser gun at the suspect. Thankfully, there was no gunfire.
We do not think of gunfire in this area. We also do not often think of fire. Three weeks ago, each happened 12 hours apart.
Early on the morning of April 21, a fire broke out in a house on Longwood Road. A family of five and their dog reportedly narrowly escaped the two-alarm fire. No lives were lost, but the damage to the house and family belongings was severe.
The response by the Baltimore City Fire Department was reportedly outstanding, both in speed and in the skill with which the fire was extinguished over several hours. It did not spread to adjacent homes. The outpouring of community support to the family was heartening.
At the May 4 Roland Park Civic League meeting, however, I heard that a Longwood Road resident reported that the water pressure in the fire hydrant near the burning house was low when firefighters arrived. A hydrant on Roland Avenue was used. This is reminiscent of the catastrophic fire on St. George's Road a few winters ago. If this report is true, all fire hydrants in the area should be checked.
The house that burned is an example I often use (on walking tours) of the setback required by the designers of Roland Park. The Olmsted brothers, like their father, wanted distance between the houses and between the houses and the street. This distance was for privacy and green space, and also for safety. Destruction during the Great Baltimore Fire was severe because of narrow setbacks. That changed in the downtown rebuilding done according to a plan designed by Frederick Law Olmsted.
More than 100 years later, the original Olmsted design of Roland Park helped prevent fire from spreading on Longwood. It also created a buffer between a speeding car and a resident out watering on Ridgewood Road. That no lives were lost on April 21 or 22 still seems miraculous.