The two workers were removing carpet and glue from a floor in a building called New North, using lacquer thinner. Moments later, they plugged in a floor stripping machine–and things went kaboom. The machine evidently ignited the cloud of  chemical vapors that had collected in the room. The resulting blaze, which occurred at about 2:45 a.m,  burned both workers.

Piringer emails: "Initially the injuries were thought to be serious, with possible respiratory involvement, but it is no[w] expected that they will be treated and released, possibly today or tomorrow. Both were treated for minor burns to the face, hands and arms."

Officials prevously suspected the men might have severe burns and respiratory damage.

Piringer says the blaze was put out by a sprinkler system. He estimates that the building sustained about $40,000 worth of damage.

Georgetown Voice blog Vox Populi has pics.

This morning, Examiner's Michael Neibauer broke off another scoop from the fishy fire truck story that he broke last spring. On the heels of a D.C. Council investigative report, he describes how Dennis Rubin, the city's fire and EMS chief, testified on April 1 last year that he knew very little about the shady donation of emergency equipment, when it fact he knew quite a bit about it—as e-mails produced in the course of the council probe reveal.

Talk about explosive charges: Rubin was under oath at the time, so did a top city official engage, you know, in the P-word? After all, he swore that day, under penalty of law to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

That's a charge serious enough that LL decided to go to the tape (forward to 1:50:45) to see if Rubin made any statements directly contradicted by his e-mails. And from what LL sees, there's nothing that would indicate the Rubin ever intentionally lied to Phil Mendelson's public safety and judiciary committee.

According to the e-mail obtained by the council, Rubin at the time of his April testimony knew that (a) a scheme was underway to donate a used fire truck, (b) acted to help identify a suitable fire truck, (c) knew the fire truck was going to the Dominican Republic, and (d) knew that David Jannarone, a top aide in Fenty's economic development office, was a prime mover in the transaction.

Did he contradict any of that on April 1?

First thing to point out is that at that point, when so little was publicly known about the transaction, most of the questions jumped off from what little was known—including that a deputy fire chief, Ronald Gill Jr., had traveled to the Dominican Republic in order to facilitate the transaction.

So most of Mendelson's questioning dealt with that issue—what did he know about Gill's travel? There is nothing in the e-mail to suggest he was notified that Gill would be heading to the Dominican Republic last January, so he was credible when denying that he knew anything about it.

The second thing to point out is that Rubin clearly did not want to answer questions on the matter, referring many times to the Office of the Attorney General and how it would produce a "much more detailed report." (That report, of course, ended up being three pages long, did not answer many pertinent questions, and ended up emboldening the council to embark on its 10-month probe.) So Neibauer is right to point out the discrepancy between the e-mails and Rubin's performance on April 1.

Asked about the fire truck itself, Rubin said at the hearing that he knew "very little about that" as well, describing a "1996 or 7" Seagrave pumper with about 197,000 miles. That's fairly close to the equipment in question—a '98 Segrave—although the mileage figure was way off, a discrepancy accounted for in a later report.

Rubin also acknowledged that he was aware of a fire truck donation taking place: "If you went back when I first arrived," he said, "there was discussion of a donation of a vehicle. I knew it was somewhere in South America." Mendelson informed him that the D.R. is not is South America. "Central America, sorry," Rubin said. Whatever, close enough.

Then Mendelson asked, "Who's in charge of this?"

Rubin replied, "Who's in charge of the department or the donation? I'm gonna say one more time, there's things that happen in the department I'm not aware of up to the second. I'll take full responsibility, hold me fully accountable, but, was I aware in any way, shape, or form? No sir." There he appears to be answering as though Mendelson asked about Gill's travel, not the donation writ large. Mendelson doesn't follow up, he moves on to ask Rubin whether he reviewed the travel request.

Then the "clueless" line comes up—again, in the context of Gill's travel, not the donation as a whole. Mendelson asks Rubin if his position is that he was "clueless" about the travel arrangements. "Yessir, I was clueless," he replied.

Later on, Rubin again discusses his knowledge of the donation, saying "it was obvious to us that the truck was being donated by someone in the city government." Mendelson did not directly follow up to ask if he knew who that someone was. Rubin did discuss a little more about what he knew two years ago, describing discussion about whether there would in fact be a donation. He added: "I was unaware it was a tourist destination or an oceanfront town....I wasn't even sure what country it was going to."

That is about as close to dissembling as Rubin comes; one e-mail in the committee record shows that on Dec. 26, 2007, he recommended a FEMS official advise on the transaction because he "can speak some Spanish and has been to the D R before." Is it plausible that he would forget the precise country more than 15 months later? Plausible it is.

The closest Mendelson gets to finding out the most important thing Rubin should know—the involvement of a top Wilson Building aide—comes with this question: "So who's in charge of this program?"

Answers Rubin, "I have no idea, sir....I'm not even sure it's a program." Which it wasn't; it was, as a council report notes, "merely the pet project...of a senior District official [Jannarone] and a well-connected nongovernment individual [Sinclair Skinner]."

Again, Mendelson did not follow up to ask who he'd had contact with.

Mendelson, reached today, makes the good point that the best questions weren't obvious at the time: "Nobody knew much at that time....In hindsight, it's obvious what questions should have been asked."

The at-large councilmember passed on the question of whether Rubin lied under oath, calling it "not clear-cut." Mendelson said he'd reviewed the tape in the course of his committee's investigation but did so some time ago.

"I've thought about this quite a bit, and I don't have an answer," he says. "It is a good question."

That man was David Rosenbaum, the New York Times reporter who was assaulted on a Chevy Chase street in January 2006 and later died of his injuries. City medics initially diagnosed Rosenbaum, 63, as being drunk, and Walker, according to the findings of a inspector general's investigation, chose to take him to Howard University Hospital rather than the much closer Sibley Memorial Hospital. She told her crewmate that was "because she needed to run her errands in that neighborhood, including going to the ATM and going by her house." The delay in his care, among other medic errors, contributed to his death.

After the investigation wrapped up in June 2006, the city moved to fire Walker. But it was already too late, it turns out.

The court today upheld an earlier administrative ruling that Walker's firing had violated city rules that place a 90-business-day limit on how long officials can wait after they "knew or should have known of the act or occurrence allegedly constituting cause" for a reprimand or firing.

According to the administrative judge and now a three-judge D.C. Court of Appeals panel, that 90-day period should have began when it was first alleged that Walker had broken department rules by directing the ambulance to go to Howard rather than Sibley. That happened in a round of initial interviews on Jan. 18, 2006, meaning that the city had until May 26 of that year to fire Walker. Instead, Walker wasn't fired until June 16, the day after the IG report was released.

The city argued that because there were some inconsistencies in those initial statements of Walker and another person in her ambulance crew, the 90-day rule should not have kicked in until the investigation's conclusion. But Senior Judge William C. Pryor found that "there is no substantial conflict between the respective statements" and thus the 90-day window began well before that.

Pryor wrote that the D.C. Council "has consistently articulated a policy of expeditious handling of adverse actions" and that it "did not intend that an agency should embark, free of any deadline, on an investigative period."

Attorney General Peter Nickles reacted to the ruling this afternoon in an interview with NewsChannel 8's Bruce DePuyt. "This is a very disappointing case," he said. "Our view was, when a individual is dissembling...we should only take action when we gathered all the facts. We'll fight back, but this was a setback."

Nickles added that the ruling "may be the last word on this matter" but he hinted that some fix for future circumstances may be in the offing.

The D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services department has hydrant problems, that much we know. With water flow cited as a key cause in the destruction of Peggy Cooper Cafritz's Chain Bridge Road manse last month, the department has been checking and rechecking plugs across the city to prevent another disaster.

Tania Shand also has hydrant problems.

Shand lives down the block from the FEMS headquarters, in the former Grimke School at T Street and Vermont Avenue NW. She has a hydrant in front of her house, and fire department brass are constantly parking in front of it.

"It's a regular occurrence," she says, noting that she'll catch cars parked illegally at least once a week. "It's not just the fire vehicles; they will park their private vehicles there as well."

And Shand says this isn't a matter of idling for a few minutes while running an errand inside. "What I have a problem with is parking, going to a meeting, sitting in your office for two hours, and using that as legitimate parking."

The situation came to a head earlier this month, when Shand was leaving for work and spotted a FEMS vehicle in front of the hydrant as she pulled out of her driveway. She drove up to the Grimke entrance, walked in and asked to see Fire Chief Dennis Rubin. He never showed, but another fire official, she says, made a "patronizing" comment equating her double-parked car to the hydrant-parker.

Incensed, she e-mailed Rubin demanding an explanation for his scofflaw subordinates.

Rubin, responding to the message, apologized. Barely. The phenomenon of fire officials obstructing fire hydrants, he explained, was due to the need "to make room for a customer that needed a child safety seat installed this morning. I could cancel the child safety seat program, but I don't think that would make sense in that it is the only one in the City that I am aware of and clearly protects [our] children."

Circling the block in search of a legal space, it seems, was not an option.

The hydrant offenses represent just one front of a war that's been waged for years between Grimke's neighbors and Grimke's occupants—the FEMS brass and the Department of Corrections. Says neighbor Chuck Dittrich, "They park on the sidewalk. They park in the alley."

And in front of the hydrant. The photo above, supplied by Dittrich, was taken in October 2007. The car spied by Shand last week was a similar FEMS fleet car.

The issue is the small parking lot available at Grimke for employees' private cars. Add to that the bevy of fleet cars used there, and the result is a terrible parking crunch—never mind that there's a Metro station right across the street. At one point, Dittrich says, the parties hashed out an agreement with the help of Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham to have the city officials obey parking laws, but adherence to that covenant has deteriorated over the years.

Deputy Fire Chief Kenneth L. Crosswhite says he is aware of Shand's complaints and has met with her several times, but he denies that department employees are parking vehicles in front of the hydrant. "That is one of Chief Rubin's pet peeves. He made that known since Day 1," he says. "I can assure you that there's no officials parking in front of fire hydrants."

Crosswhite notes that the department's rulebook indicates that drivers of official cars are "accountable for ensuring that the parking/stopping of Department vehicles, during non-emergency situations, is done in such a way as to cause the least amount of inconvenience to the public." The Grimke building and fire hydrants are both specifically mentioned.

But nowhere in the rule does it mention that drivers are obligated to follow applicable parking laws. Crosswhite does note that department employees are responsible for any tickets they may incur.

The long-term plan has been to move the city agencies out of Grimke, but D.C. Council politics have thus far interfered with that plan. Thus Dittrich posits a conspiracy of sorts on the part of the FEMS and corrections employees, who don't want to be in the decrepit building any more than the neighbors do. "They try to do this on purpose," Dittrich says. "Their goal is to take it out on us, to have us lobby to get rid of them."

Dittrich says the hydrant violations would be the "most egregious" example thereof. Adds Shand, "It's just symbolic of the whole sitation."

* Miss the debate? Don't head to the live blogs: Head to the live blog of the live blogs.

* G.W. student blog The Colonialist has a couple photos of Dick Cheney being released from G.W. Hospital. He waves.

* Dear China: Wish we could give you some advice on this whole fledgling democracy thing. Regrets, The United States of America. [via Polymeme]

* Via Talking Points Memo: Ayers, Shmayers; even those people who believe Barack Obama is a terrorist are still voting for him. Says one Obama supporter:

"Well, I don't know much about this terrorist group Barack used to be in with that Weather guy but I'm sick of paying for health insurance at work and that's why I'm supporting Barack."

And in this newspaper:

- Photographer Darrow Montgomery and Senior Writer Jason Cherkis document the end of a Columbia Heights relic and ask: Does anybody care?

- Your Reel Affirmations film fest guide.

- In Cheap Seats, Dave McKenna talks race and Redskins. What's black and white and reluctant to integrate all over?

- In Loose Lips, Mike DeBonis does Peter Nickles does Alberto Gonzales.

- and The Sexist launches its Manliest Workplace in D.C. tournament!

Photo by Jason Mogavero