Ocean City Today STEPHEN DECATUR SEAHAWKS WINTER SPORTS PREVIEW … PAGE 29A
Survivor recounts escape
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DECEMBER 6, 2013
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Tide goes out on High Tide music festival Organizer tells council big event won’t work
Recalls victim saying she lit Sterner’s cigarette
ZACK HOOPES Staff Writer
NANCY POWELL Staff Writer (Dec. 6, 2013) Theodore Handy was on the second floor of the rectory of St. Paul’s by-the-Sea Episcopal Church on Nov. 26 when the Rev. David Dingwall told him to leave. “The pastor told me to leave the building and go down the side steps,” Handy, a retired engineer, said last Thursday. Moments earlier, Handy had “heard a little boom downstairs” and the fire alarm had sounded. It was about 9:25 a.m. “When I saw smoke, I starting panicking,” said Handy, who was using a courtesy phone. Dingwall, who was in his third-floor office above the Shepherd’s Crook, yelled, “What’s all that smoke,” and went to the second floor, according to Handy. There, he and the church secretary started arguing about paperwork, Handy said. “They started scrambling to get paperwork together. “The smoke was coming so fast and they were panicking,” Handy said. “The more they talked, the more smoke was filling the room. They had no idea the bottom underneath us was a fiery inferno. “I said, “You all better come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” he said. Another man, who had been on the other side of the second floor, entered the room and said they should all get out using the back steps. Dingwall, Handy said, also told him to go down
OCEAN CITY TODAY/ZACK HOOPES
Parishioners and community members leave flowers in the fence in front of the burned-out rectory of St. Paul’s by-the-Sea.
‘She kept saying, ‘I just gave him a light and he exploded,’ over and over. She just kept saying it over and over.’ the side steps. The man who had entered the room, Handy and the secretary, who was carrying a computer, ran down the steps. “The pastor was still getting paperwork,” Handy said. “It was dark down there,” he said. “I ran to the glass fire door and squeezed
through it. When I got outside, I saw the fire inferno that was underneath us.” Handy also saw a woman whose name, he said, was Dana (Truitt), a volunteer who helps hand out food to the needy at the Shepherd’s Crook. Truitt is listed in critical but stable
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(Dec. 6, 2013) As was previously suspected, the High Tide Music Festival is officially a washout. After nearly three years of skepticism, Founder’s Entertainment formally bowed out at this week’s city council meeting from its proposal to bring a flagship music festival to the resort. “We have spent thousands and thousands of hours and considerable resources trying to pull off a first-class festival and bring it to Ocean City’s beautiful beach,” Founder’s partner Tom Russell told city officials Monday. “It’s been a pleasure, and I’m truly sorry that we were unable to pull this off.” Last week, after Russell postponed a further discussion of the event, council voiced concern that the city would again be left hanging - for the third year in a row after reserving a key June weekend for an event that failed to pan out at the last minute. Originally scheduled for the summer of 2012, the festival was first pushed back to 2013 due to See FIREFLY on Page 9A
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