EAST POINT, Ga.

A mother of six says she is being forced out of her rental home due to electrical issues.

Alicia Cooper told Channel 2s Amy Napier Viteri that electrical problems caused a fire last week. I feel like its a burden, its a bit much right now, Cooper said.

Cooper is moving out of her home on Ben Hill Road in East Point, but said she is not sure where she is going. Cooper said East Point Power came to her home after the fire and decided to cut off power.

Before he even touched the meter good, it was sparking fire and flame from it, Cooper said.

Cooper said an electrician estimated the cost of repairs to be around $10,000. They told (the landlord) hes going to have to remove all this, go through the wall, go up into the attic and remove all the wiring, Cooper said.

Cooper said her landlord told her via email that he would refund two weeks of rent for March and the balance of her security deposit after repairs were made to the property.

Cooper said she should get all of Marchs rent back and the full deposit. She said she lost hundreds of dollars in groceries when she lost power and she was forced to pay for a hotel room in the meantime.

I had to make sure I was able to provide, you know, heat, water and shelter for them, Cooper said.

Cooper said she now also understands her high electrical bills, including one for more than $700.

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Electrical fire forces mom of 6 out of East Point home

Ross and Meg Rushing were entertaining a friend at their brand-new home in Lubbock, Texas, on Aug. 24, 2012, when a clap of thunder appeared to set off their burglar alarm.

Unable to turn it off, Ross Rushing and his friend, Brennen Teel, went to the garage to get a ladder so they could disable the system.

Thats when the explosion happened, Rushing recalled. Honestly, I thought I was dead immediately.

Rushing was able to climb out from under the buckled garage door, but couldnt locate Teel in the thick black smoke that was now pouring from the home.

Firefighters later found his body at the rear of the garage. Investigators believe he opened the drop-down attic staircase, not realizing the attic was ablaze. Oxygen rushed in, causing a back-draft explosion that killed the 31-year-old Teel, a resident of Heath, Texas, they said.

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What eats away at Teels family is not just the seeming randomness of his death. It is the fire marshals determination that the fire that triggered the explosion started when a bolt of lightning sent electricity coursing into the home, burning tiny holes in the yellow corrugated stainless steel pipes supplying natural gas to appliances and heaters in the rest of the house. And it is the fact that, as they later learned, some fire experts have been warning for years that the piping poses a hazard when lightning strikes nearby.

I would not wish this on anybody anybody, said Teels father, Ken, who with his wife, Becky, is suing the manufacturer of the pipe. Its been a nightmare.

Meg and Ross Rushing escaped the fire that destroyed their home in Lubbock, Texas. But their friend, Brennen Teel, above, who had been visiting for the night did not. He died in the couple's garage in a fire and explosion allegedly caused by the failure of flexible piping carrying natural gas following a lightning strike.

Teels death highlights an ongoing debate over the safety of the piping known as corrugated stainless steel tubing, or CSST which has been installed in as many as 10 million U.S. homes since the 1990s, according to some manufacturers estimates. Its use is approved in building codes around the nation, though no longer in Lubbock, where the city issued a moratorium on its use in the wake of Teels death.

See more here:
Lightning Strike Fires Reignite Debate Over Gas Pipe Safety

Ross and Meg Rushing were entertaining a friend at their brand-new home in Lubbock, Texas, on Aug. 24, 2012, when a clap of thunder appeared to set off their burglar alarm.

Unable to turn it off, Ross Rushing and his friend, Brennen Teel, went to the garage to get a ladder so they could disable the system.

Thats when the explosion happened, Rushing recalled. Honestly, I thought I was dead immediately.

Rushing was able to climb out from under the buckled garage door, but couldnt locate Teel in the thick black smoke that was now pouring from the home.

Firefighters later found his body at the rear of the garage. Investigators believe he opened the drop-down attic staircase, not realizing the attic was ablaze. Oxygen rushed in, causing a back-draft explosion that killed the 31-year-old Teel, a resident of Heath, Texas, they said.

It has come to our attention that the browser you are using is either not running javascript or out of date. Please enable javascript and/or update your browser if possible.

What eats away at Teels family is not just the seeming randomness of his death. It is the fire marshals determination that the fire that triggered the explosion started when a bolt of lightning sent electricity coursing into the home, burning tiny holes in the yellow corrugated stainless steel pipes supplying natural gas to appliances and heaters in the rest of the house. And it is the fact that, as they later learned, some fire experts have been warning for years that the piping poses a hazard when lightning strikes nearby.

I would not wish this on anybody anybody, said Teels father, Ken, who with his wife, Becky, is suing the manufacturer of the pipe. Its been a nightmare.

Meg and Ross Rushing escaped the fire that destroyed their home in Lubbock, Texas. But their friend, Brennen Teel, above, who had been visiting for the night did not. He died in the couple's garage in a fire and explosion allegedly caused by the failure of flexible piping carrying natural gas following a lightning strike.

Teels death highlights an ongoing debate over the safety of the piping known as corrugated stainless steel tubing, or CSST which has been installed in as many as 10 million U.S. homes since the 1990s, according to some manufacturers estimates. Its use is approved in building codes around the nation, though no longer in Lubbock, where the city issued a moratorium on its use in the wake of Teels death.

Read this article:
Debate over gas pipes' safety

FIRE that levelled home destroys antique collected accumulated over a lifetime.

Mick Cokayne sorts through the remains of the Benalla home. Picture: PETER MERKESTEYN

The site of the home destroyed by fire.

The site of the home destroyed by fire.

The site of the home destroyed by fire.

The site of the home destroyed by fire.

The site of the home destroyed by fire.

The site of the home destroyed by fire.

A FIRE that yesterday levelled a Benalla home has destroyed a collection of antiques accumulated by the residents over their lifetimes.

The couple, aged in their 40s, had left their home at 4.45am to travel to a swap meet in Whittlesea before firefighters were called to their Mansfield Road home at 6am.

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Benalla fire destroys house, antique collection |PICTURES

The Actiontec Wireless Network Extender Plus Powerline Network Adapter 500 Kit (retail model PWR51WK01) is a sure, and easy way to extend your network, both wired and wireless. It's a good fit for a large home with concrete walls, or separate households in an apartment building that want to share a single Internet connection.

It's far from perfect, however. The kit uses slow Wi-Fi and Ethernet standards and hence provides connection speeds only fast enough for casual Internet sharing and mild file sharing. Additionally, the included adapters don't come with a pass-through power socket, and one of them is very bulky.

In all, if you're looking for a quick and effective way to extend your home network, at the current street price of around $90, the PWR51WK01 is a very good buy. For more choices on power-line products, check out this list.

The new Actiontec kit comes with a very large WPB3000 adapter which has a built-in Wi-Fi access point.

Bulky design, easy to setup The kit includes two power-line adapters of different models. One of them is the compact, adapter PWR500 model , and the other is a new WPB3000 model that's about five times its physical size. The former is a traditional adapter with a single LAN port; the latter has two LAN ports and a built-in Wi-Fi access point.

As is the kit's intention, you connect the PWR500 to your existing router using a network cable (one short cable is included with the kit), and place the WPB3000 at the far corner. When you plug both of them into their power socket, the two will connect to each other using the home's electrical wiring. Now you can add two wired clients, such as two desktop computers, to the network using the two LAN ports on the WPB3000. On top of that, you can also add many Wi-Fi clients to the network by connecting them to the WPB3000's built-in Wi-Fi network.

The above is also exactly how you set the kit up. Included in the box is a sticker with the default Wi-Fi network (network name and password) printed on it. With that information, there's nothing else you need to do to start using the kit. The fact that you can place the two adapters far away from each other, up to about 1,000 feet in terms of power wiring length, means the kit is a lot more effective than traditional Wi-Fi range extenders.

Note, however, that both adapters take the shape of a two-prong snap-on power adapter, and neither has a pass-though power socket. While this is OK for the PWR500 since it's very compact, for the other, this is a terribly bulky design. When used, it will for sure crowd the wall socket and block access to adjacent receptacles. And since that power-line adapters require to be plugged directly into the wall (and not on a power strip or protector) to work well, make sure you have multiple power sockets at the far corner where you intended to plug the WPB3000 in.

Also note that power-line adapters tend to come in a kit of two because you need at least two adapters to create the first power-line connection. After that you only need one adapter per additional connection. That said, you should buy the PWR51WK01 kit only if you don't already have any power-line adapters, otherwise, just the WPB3000, or alternatively the ZyXel PLA4231, is needed for the Wi-Fi extending purpose.

Both adapters come with a security button to create a secure connection between them (so nobody can tap in your network by using their own power-line adapter, a seniority that's very possible if you live in a multiple-unit housing complex), and the WPB3000 also support Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). WPS allows for quickly adding a Wi-Fi device to network by pressing a button, you don't even need to know the network's name and password.

See the rest here:
Actiontec's new power-line kit helps extend your home network

The Actiontec Wireless Network Extender Plus Powerline Network Adapter 500 Kit (retail model PWR51WK01) is a sure, and easy way to extend your network, both wired and wireless. It's a good fit for a large home with concrete walls, or separate households in an apartment building that want to share a single Internet connection.

It's far from perfect, however. The kit uses slow Wi-Fi and Ethernet standards and hence provides connection speeds only fast enough for casual Internet sharing and mild file sharing. Additionally, the included adapters don't come with a pass-through power socket, and one of them is very bulky.

In all, if you're looking for a quick and effective way to extend your home network, at the current street price of around $90, the PWR51WK01 is a very good buy. For more choices on power-line products, check out this list.

The new Actiontec kit comes with a very large WPB3000 adapter which has a built-in Wi-Fi access point.

Bulky design, easy to setup The kit includes two power-line adapters of different models. One of them is the compact, adapter PWR500 model , and the other is a new WPB3000 model that's about five times its physical size. The former is a traditional adapter with a single LAN port; the latter has two LAN ports and a built-in Wi-Fi access point.

As is the kit's intention, you connect the PWR500 to your existing router using a network cable (one short cable is included with the kit), and place the WPB3000 at the far corner. When you plug both of them into their power socket, the two will connect to each other using the home's electrical wiring. Now you can add two wired clients, such as two desktop computers, to the network using the two LAN ports on the WPB3000. On top of that, you can also add many Wi-Fi clients to the network by connecting them to the WPB3000's built-in Wi-Fi network.

The above is also exactly how you set the kit up. Included in the box is a sticker with the default Wi-Fi network (network name and password) printed on it. With that information, there's nothing else you need to do to start using the kit. The fact that you can place the two adapters far away from each other, up to about 1,000 feet in terms of power wiring length, means the kit is a lot more effective than traditional Wi-Fi range extenders.

Note, however, that both adapters take the shape of a two-prong snap-on power adapter, and neither has a pass-though power socket. While this is OK for the PWR500 since it's very compact, for the other, this is a terribly bulky design. When used, it will for sure crowd the wall socket and block access to adjacent receptacles. And since that power-line adapters require to be plugged directly into the wall (and not on a power strip or protector) to work well, make sure you have multiple power sockets at the far corner where you intended to plug the WPB3000 in.

Also note that power-line adapters tend to come in a kit of two because you need at least two adapters to create the first power-line connection. After that you only need one adapter per additional connection. That said, you should buy the PWR51WK01 kit only if you don't already have any power-line adapters, otherwise, just the WPB3000, or alternatively the ZyXel PLA4231, is needed for the Wi-Fi extending purpose.

Both adapters come with a security button to create a secure connection between them (so nobody can tap in your network by using their own power-line adapter, a seniority that's very possible if you live in a multiple-unit housing complex), and the WPB3000 also support Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). WPS allows for quickly adding a Wi-Fi device to network by pressing a button, you don't even need to know the network's name and password.

Read more:
Actiontec Wireless Network Extender Plus Powerline Network Adapter 500 Kit

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -

A prominent family's palatial home with panoramic views of downtown Kansas City was destroyed in a fire.

The loss is estimated at $5-8 million.

Charles and Patty Garney built the Briarcliff development on bluffs just north of the Missouri River and their nearly 15,000-square foot home was a focal point. Motorists could see the home as they drove north on Highway 169. The home had verandas offering sweeping views, and the Garneys often hosted fundraisers and other events for prominent politicians at the home.

Charles Garney is a businessman. He and his wife are prominent civic leaders in Kansas City, and are well-regarded for their gracious hospitality and support of charitable organizations. Patty Garney became emotional when surveying the damage during daylight hours Friday morning.

The couple had been at the Big 12 tournament at the Sprint Center, but were home when the flames erupted just before 11.

Patty Garney told firefighters she saw a glow from a skylight, and realized it was fire. She quickly woke up her husband. They along with their dog and a house guest escaped.

Patty Garney said she wants a thorough investigation.

The exact cause is under investigation, but the three-alarm fire is believed to have started in an attic area. Almost the entire slate roof is gone.

"I saw where it started and I don't know exactly what started it," Charles Garney said. "My guess is electrical wiring that caught some combustible material that caught that stuff on fire."

Read the original here:
Prominent family's Briarcliff mansion destroyed in fire

Posted on: 6:01 am, March 14, 2014, by Michelle Pekarsky, updated on: 01:01pm, March 14, 2014

KANSAS CITY, Mo. A Northland mansion was consumed by flames late Thursdaynight; the fire possibly starting in the electrical wiring, and now a prominent Kansas City family must deal with the loss of everything they had inside.

The fire started at about 10:30 p.m. at the home of Charles and Patty Garney in the 4200 block of N. Hickory, which had an estimated home value of $4.2 million. The Garneys are well-known among Kansas City leaders for their civic and charitable activities in Kansas City. They say they built the home to entertain crowds for fundraising events.

Mrs. Garney was the first to notice the fire and told her husband and a friend, who was staying with them. She saw the flames in the skylight and woke everybody up and got them out of the home theyve lived in for about 20 years.

Just kind of stood here and watched it burn but were safe so thats the most important thing. And our friends were here last night for us and theyre going to be here for us so we just have to figure out what were going to do, said Patty Garney.

Firefighters think the fire originated in the attic and was burning for some time before the Garneys and their house guest arrived back home after a night at Sprint Center. When firefighters arrived, the home was fully engulfed in flames and firefighters called out three alarms to bring it under control.

They faced challenges due to the strong winds, which spread embers to neighboring homes.

The Garneys, through their company, Garney Construction, developed much of the Briarcliff commercial area.

Because of the massive area, firefighters expect they may have to remain on the scene for 24 hours.

See pictures from the fire in FOX 4 Kathy Quinns report.

See the article here:
Multi-million dollar Briarcliff home destroyed by fire

43 DUNN ST., OAKVILLE, ONT.

ASKING PRICE: $5.5-million

TAXES: $21,579 (2013)

LOT SIZE: 104 by 135 feet

AGENT: Alex Irish (Re/Max Aboutowne Realty Corp.)

The back story

The Victorian mansion at 43 Dunn St. was built for Cecil Marlatt in 1880. Mr. Marlatt was the owner of the Marlatt and Armstrong Tannery and a well-known supporter of the Royal Canadian Yacht Club.

The original property stretched to the edge of Lake Ontario to the south, with an orchard of fruit trees in front of the house. A greenhouse, playhouse, stables and two fish ponds also occupied the surrounding land. Afternoon tea was served in a summer house that overlooked a cricket pitch and a lawn tennis court, according to real estate agent Alex Irish of ReMax Aboutowne Realty Corp.

Over time, more houses were built on the streets of Olde Oakville. The house at 43 Dunn is about one block from the water and two blocks from the centre of downtown shopping in Oakville.

The current owners, Clive and Hilary Maile, lived on the waterfront in the late 1990s when they went for a walk through the undulating streets of Olde Oakville and saw a for sale sign in front of No. 43.

Link:
Home of the Week: Oakville landmark restored to original splendour

The Merced County Sheriffs Department seized more than 300 marijuana plants Wednesday and nearly 100 pounds of trimmed buds from a Merced home that deputies described as a commercial operation.

Deputy Ray Framstad said the residents paid someone to bypass electrical wiring, which allowed the growers to steal more than $20,000 in electricity from Pacific Gas and Electric Co. over the last six months.

Sheriffs detectives raided the home in the 2100 block of West Highway 140 early Wednesday and found the houses four-car garage had been converted into a growing operation.

This is one of those residential-neighborhood grows that are prime targets for home-invasion robberies, Framstad said. They create a real danger for the safety of the community.

Deputies seized 305 plants and about 95 pounds of marijuana buds with a combined estimated street value of about $735,000. Investigators said it was at least the second grow cycle at the home, bringing the total estimated value of the operation to more than $1.4 million, the Sheriffs Department said.

Detectives will seek criminal cultivation and utility theft charges against two residents, 46-year-old Florentino Gutierrez and 38-year-old Maria Villfan, both of Delhi. Deputies described them as a married couple. Efforts to reach them Wednesday by telephone were unsuccessful.

Investigators do not believe the growers were connected to any larger trafficking operations such as cartels or street gangs, but allege they were selling marijuana commercially.

Framstad said Child Protective Services would be asked to review the case as a precaution because there was a teenage girl living at the home. However, he said the marijuana was secured behind locked gates and did not appear easily accessible. The child was not removed from the home, the Sheriffs Department confirmed.

Gutierrez had a medical marijuana recommendation for up to 99 plants, but in Merced County residents are only allowed a maximum of 12 plants per parcel of land.

But, even with the 99 plants, this grow was still well above that number, Framstad said.

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More than 300 marijuana plants seized from Merced home