Around Maryland

First responders deal with traumas daily. They witness the aftermath of terrible car crashes. They hear desperate calls for help on the other end of a call. They see families devastated after a fire destroys their homes. They call loved ones to share terrible news. It is not an easy job to have and to answer that call every shift.

The Maryland Board of Public Works is set to approve an engineering contract of up to $100 million to advance the east-west Red Line transit project in Baltimore at a meeting next week. With approval next Wednesday from the Board of Public Works — comprising the governor, comptroller and treasurer — the state can move ahead with planning and engineering tasks for the Red Line.

A former top fire department official in both Prince George’s County in Maryland and the City of Alexandria in Virginia is the pick to be the next fire chief in Montgomery County, Maryland. Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich has nominated Corey Smedley to lead the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service after his last pick was abruptly withdrawn from consideration earlier this year.

Tangier Island, one of the inhabited islands in the Chesapeake Bay, received a $2.3 million grant for environmental protection and mitigation projects, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality announced. Tangier is just south of the border between Maryland and Virginia, and a bit south of Smith Island. It’s home to “a unique and vulnerable Chesapeake Bay community,” according to the DEQ.

For more than 60 days, since the collapse of the Key Bridge, the 21-member crew of the Dali has remained onboard the cargo ship, and there is no firm timetable on when they will be allowed to leave, sparking concern from people around the world. The Dali still sits at berth one at Seagirt where it has been for the past week. For eight weeks prior to that, the ship was in the middle of the Patapsco River.

A residential compost pilot program in Frederick has diverted about 550,000 pounds of organic waste from being sent to a landfill, city officials said Tuesday. The pilot, which is just under 2 years old, includes 1,164 households participating in the free compost collection program through Key City Compost. The total amount of diverted waste is 574,670 pounds as of the end of April.

The City of Salisbury announced a partnership with Salisbury University to train youth transportation ambassadors ahead of the 2024-2025 school year. The City says ambassadors will primarily be part-time and temporary staff focused on youth outreach. The transportation safety program will teach safe practices for walking, riding bikes, using scooters and other forms of micro-mobility, according to a press release.

Baltimore County plans to hire a pair of law firms to help it with the complicated legal wrangling that already has begun following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The county wants to partner with Grant & Eisenhofer P.A. and Bekman, Marder, Hopper, Malarkey & Perlin LLC, the county said in a news release. Baltimore County Council will consider the proposal at a work session Tuesday and is expected to vote next week.

City residents and shop owners expressed relief Tuesday as Howard County's flood mitigation efforts successfully averted severe flooding the night before. County officials said they planned and prepared Monday for flooding on Main Street, but fortunately, there wasn't any. Shop owners, like those at the Stone House Collective, braced themselves for the worst as the storm drenched the historic area with about 2 inches of rainwater in two hours.