>> a burning problem right now for one of the area's largest fire department. here's how it usually work. you call them up when you have a fire, they show up and put it out. here's how it's working in prince george's county. you call the fire department and 30% of the time, no one from those two stations shows up. the call inside goes to another firehouse and that slows down

everything. gary nurenberg with more. gary? >> reporter: derek, it is staffing shortage. it is essentially the nearest firehouse in some cases has no one there to respond so the call gets rerouted to another firehouse that does have somebody ready to roll. christmas eve 2009, suitland, a big apartment house fire took four alarms to handle the thing. half the equipment was understaffed by national standards. the entire second alarm failed to meet those standards. >> in 2010, prince george's county out of approximately 130,000 calls, almost 30,000 of those calls for service, we responded with understaffed personnel. >> reporter: the county is the biggest in the country with a combination career and volunteer fire service. the county counts on those volunteers. >> as the economy gets worse and worse, folks need to work more and more, make more money. the volunteers that normally have time to spend time at the firehouse, they have to work. they don't have time to be there. we don't have the budgets to be able to put more career staffing in place.

>> reporter: and there is con see consequence. a new -- consequence. a new study shows the riverdale heights station and another failed to respond to calls within a minute more than 30% of the time. >> with any emergency, whether it's a fire emergency or medical emergency, every minute, every second counts. so longer response times could translate into poor outcomes in our community. >> reporter: but with declining budgets in repeat years, the targets for response times have increased, becoming longer, not shorter. >> everybody would like to have a firehouse in their backyard. that's not fiscally responsible or realistic. >> reporter: we made a mistake. the guy with the moustache is the chief and the other the union president. both say it is actually getting better, that the new county administration budgeted for additional firefighters this year, next year and the year after. some federal money meant new hires as well. to meet a goal of one and a half firefighters per 1,000

residents, one national standard, that would take more than ten years. tonight, fbi investigators trying to figure out why a gunman opened fire inside of a sikh temple sunday. weighed michael page shot and killed six people before an officer killed him. he left behind no writings, no evidence for the attack. he did start paying music with white power band back in 2000. right now detectives are looking into possible ties to white sue prepare -- supremacist groups. >> they didn't know he was capable of plotting such violence. >> he shot the first police officer eight times. that man is in critical condition tonight. 9 news now spoke a group of sikhs earlier today and they say page's anger was certainly misdirected. >> went through this in 9/11 where the first person got killed after 9/11 was a sikh

itself, just again mistaken identity. >> the group says they need to see others outside the sikh community speaking out against the hate and theviolence. the sikh religion is traced back to the 16th century. the word sikh means student or disciple. a sikh believes in one god, in the freedom of religion and in the equality of human kind and what's more, the importance of good deeds, especially in service to others, including those less fortunate. sikhs practice daily prayer and meditation. community fellowship is key to them. drinking and smoking is strictly forbidden. there are an estimated group in the d.c. area. a hero's welcome for a bethesda girl just back from overseas. as matt jablow tells us, many of katie's friends and family members were out at dulles when she brought home the gold.

>> reporter: of the thousands of people who came through dulles international airport today, it can be safely said that only one was a 15-year-old girl frombethesda. >> like, wow, i can't believe it all. >> reporter: arriving sophomore stone ridge school of the sacred heart. >> it's really, really cool. >> reporter: whose proud parents were beaming about their daughter's remarkable accomplishment. >> almost like a disney movie. >> reporter: and jealously guarding the gold medal that is every swimmer's dream. three days after winning thefreestyle with the second fastest team in history, katie arrived in dulles around 7:00 tonight into the shrieking embrace of about a dozen classmates. the youngest member of the u.s. olympic team katie said she was overwhelmed by the entire olympic experience. >> what was it like for you? >> it was so much fun. it was a great experience and i

loved it. >> reporter: as far as what she intends to do with the rest of her summer vacation, the american record holder in the 800 freestyle says she hopes to get a little rest before school begins in three weeks. >> do you think you get to go first when the teacher asks you what you did for your summer vacation about? >> i don't know. i think everybody already knows maybe. maybe. >> reporter: katie said she's hoping she'll be back on the medal stand in the 2016 olympic games. if and when she makes it there, katie would still only be 19 years old. >> wow, a lot of swimming left from that woman. little girl i should say. thank you, sir. how do you think our power companies did getting the lights back in to customers in the aftermath back in june? the public service commission scheduled three public hearings to find out how you feel. tomorrow's meeting in rockville focuses primarily on pepco. it gets started at 7:00 p.m. just a tad sticky and hot out there today. topper is out on the weather deck where it's cooling off a bit. what about the morning commute?

>> the commute looks fine. we hit 93 again, so we're adding to the total 93 degree days. let's check out how many 90- degree days we've had. for meteorologist summer, june, july, august, average is only 31 for the entire three-month period. we're well above that. last year was hot. we had 47. year before 52. the all-time record for 90- degree plus days is 55. so it's mathematically possible we shall see. but this is quite the hot summer. not as hot as last summer but still hot. 82 down field. 72 in gaithersburg. wakeup weather fine. 68 to 76 the start. 66 to 76 by 7:00. by 9:00 temps in the 70s. we'll come back and tell you where earnesto is going and give you the 9 weather alert code for the next three days. police say they have identified a body found inside

a duffel bag in a fort washington creek. it's that of a missing woman from d.c. her name is phillips. she was 22. she was last seen a week ago dropping off her daughter at a day care in northeast. the body was found later in the week. police are investigating. out on the campaign trail, we all know virginia governor bob mcdonnell is on the short list of vp candidates for mitt romney. >> reporter: as much as i would love to give you a scoop, i can tell you this. you'll be a second to know. there's a small list in boston and only though know who's on it. all i can tell you is governor romney asked me to head up the platform committee at the convention. i'm looking forward to doing that. and head of the governor's association. doing everything i can to help mitt romney win over virginia. >> he went on to say they agree whoever wins virginia will win the election. a spokesman for d.c. mayor vince gray confirms gray's staff did hold a meeting with a

crisis management expert, a woman who once counseled monica lewinski. however they say that expert has no role in the gray administration, paid or otherwise. the mayor has been caught up in a scandal most of his time in office. three campaign aids pleaded guilty to an ongoing federal investigation of his campaign. the man accused of going on shooting spree, killing six people, injuring gabby giffords and 12 others is expected to change his plea to guilty. first a judge in the case has to rule that he is competent to understand what he's doing. if that guilty plea is expected, loughner will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. a bid may be brewing to bring the olympics to our neighborhood. my thoughts on why we would likely be better off watching the games on television. coming up, a government electrician making more than any member of congress? others making more than the vice-president and chief justice. our investigation exposes a top

ten list at gsa that will not have taxpayers laughing. i got the chance to start my own business. i know what it's like to hire people and to make ends meet. from those experiences, i had the chance of running the olympics. the games were in real trouble. there'd been way too much spending. and in massachusetts i found a budget that was badly out of balance. our legislature was 85% democrat. and every one of the four years i was governor, we balanced the budget. i want to use those experiences to help americans have a better future. we believe in our future. we believe in ourselves. we believe the greatest days of america are ahead. i'm mitt romney and i approve this message.

incredible video tonight of a massive fire that caught two buildings in sacramento, california. this happened early this morning. witnesses say the flames were shooting 100 feet in the air when the firefighters got

there. fortunately, nobody hurt. in tonight's 9 wants to know report, it's 20 minutes before letterman and we've got a top 10 list that nobody's laughing at. it's the first of its kind into our investigation of the u.s. general services administration showing paychecks bigger than the vice-president's and the chief justice's of the supreme court. new revelations into the agency responsible for government real estate and supposedly keeping costs down. >> reporter: beside me, you're seeing the 13,000 gsa payroll records we obtained with the freedom of information act. we spent more than a week sorting through them all. the gsa top ten shows everyone making more than $200,000 a year. heavily weighed by bow now'ses and unused leave pay. for this electrician supervisor earning $200 thousand, most of it from over time.

♪ ♪ >> the president of the united states makes $400,000 a year. and that's one of few government paychecks higher than what our analysis found at gsa. >> they absolutely should be explaining. >> reporter: congressman jeff denham, wants explanations for gsa's top 10, identified by our investigation, all making more than denham. although the president did earn more, six gsa workers got checks bigger than the vice- president, even more than the chief justice of the supreme court. sharing in the millions in gsa bonuses, unused leave pay and overtime exposed by a 9 wants to know freedom of information act request. >> we've got to put a stop to it. the questions we're asking are what are all these different categories of overtime, what are all the different categories of bonuses? >> i've got the payroll records. here's an electrician supervisor. >> reporter: a washington electrician made the top seen for overtime with more than

half of his $214,929 paycheck coming from overtime alone. our investigation identified more than $8 million in overtime coming from two gsa categories. >> we've got to put a stop to it. the questions we're asking is what are all these different categories of overtime. >> how important is what we exposed? >> it's extremely important. i've had committee members. their eyes light up. >> reporter: nine of the top ten earners we identified worked in washington offices making. one washington air-conditioning mechanic earned $112,000 in overtime in addition to $15,000 in bonuses and pay deferentials. some got there because of payouts of more than $7 million in unused leave pay identified by our investigation. this woman went home with lots of that pay.

gail lovelace reported earning zero dollars in base pay and zero dollars in award pay in an opm database release, but we uncovered $257,000 in actual earnings, including more than $81,000 in leave pay, and $20,000 in bonuses. like that electrician, she was among the gsa's ten highest paid employees in our analysis, taking home checks bigger than some of the highest ranking officials in america. >> gsa has not responded to repeated interview requests but in a written response, the agency said that woman who earned over $80,000 in leave pay was a federal employee for nearly 40 years. and was paid for her unused leave time when she retired, saying gsa pays overtime leave and locality pay in accordance with applicable laws and the majority of gsa employees did

not work overtime. finally, they cut bonuses for senior executives and instituted a hiring freeze while the agency is evaluating its current structure and the overall compensation process. tonight still no answer to our original question as to why so many of the bonuses of $30 million we uncovered and the overtime wasn't reported until 9 wants to know filed that freedom of information request. >> my big question is, is there any rule against somebody earning that much overtime in gsa? >> it's interesting because gsa isn't addressing it. we can find nothing to indicate they've broken the law. the question is, is it good business? and that's the question congress is asking. >> exactly. russ, i'm glad we're asking. good job. did you see the disney movie, walle? take it and add humvee and you've got curiosity, the one ton massive recover sitting on the planet mars waiting to get started in the search for signs

of life. while engineers go through some testing, curiosity is still sending back images, but the pictures, they're only the beginning. this is the third rover to land on mars. the other two could only admire the paint job, so to speak. curiosity, it will be able to kick the tires, check under the hood and rev up the engine. >> it has the ability to scoop up the rocks, take them in and then really break them down. >> that is melissa trainer of nasa's flight center in green built. they built the lab that curiosity will use to examine mars. an arlington company called atk designed the sensors in that lab. they're looking forward to years of discovery. there is some word today that the very same folks who put in a bid to make washington baltimore's area host for the olympics are gearing up to make another run, this time for the games of 2024. tonight i've got two words for them. please don't. okay, first of all, i love the olympics. i have since i was a kid.

but as a grownup, i'm thinking there are way better on television than live from our neighborhood. first of all, there is the money, and believe me, you care about this, because it would be your money as in tax dollars paying for all those fancy stadium upgrades. and beware the early estimates. in 2005, for example, they told british olympics the it would cost $2.4 billion pounds. seven years later, try $9.3 billion pounds or $14 billion. but you say what about those long-term benefits of all those venus? well, for the 2004 games, athens, greece, spent 9 billion euros to build the fancy infrastructure. sure did look nice. today much of it looks like this, once state-of-the-art pool, abandoned, rotting. and then there is the matter of public transportation. don't want to pile on metro here, but let's be real. half a million visitors or more for three weeks? talk about piling on to the

metro. and what if a nasty band of storms or a torrential comes to town. can you imagine olympic village in the dark day six. nobody wants that. maybe i'm getting worked up about nothing. hosting the olympics is certainly a great honor, but let's be real. it's an honor i'm generous enough to leave for other cities. to paraphrase an old saying, the olympics are a great place to visit, but you probably don't want tomorrow this live here. we will start with ernesto. still a tropical storm and headed for the yucatan peninsula probably in the morning on wednesday. probably category one storm when it hits. then it goes back to the gulf of mexico and goes through central mexico itself. that could produce big time flooding. it may actually traverse the entire country in mexico, get back in the pacific, regenerate. that happens, but not too often. a live look outside brought to you by michael and son. it's 82. our high was 93.

dew point 71. dew point's in the 70s, bad thing. winds out of the south at 5 and pressure rising a little bit 30 inches of mercury and even. satellite picture radar combined. most of the activity was south and east of us today. we had one warning. the reason why, a little frontal boundary draped to the south of us. it's going to move its way north a little bit tomorrow, so have a better chance of a couple of thunderstorms tomorrow, but for the most part pretty nice tuesday, really. you'll need your shades tomorrow. we'll call it just warm. average high upper 80s. that's about where we're going to be. isolated storms are possible. almost hot wednesday. if you don't think it's hot wednesday, it will be hot on thursday. all right, overnight looks like this. partly cloudy, mild, low temperatures, 66 to about 74. so i suppose a bit muggy downtown. winds light southeast at 10. by morning partly cloudy and warm. 70s and 80s. air quality in the moderate range, which is about as good as we can expect for this time of the year. wind out of the southeast at

10. some isolated storms, not a huge deal. high temperatures near 90. winds will increase a little bit southwesterly at 10 to 15 by afternoon. so we'll break it down. 66 to 76 at 6:00. then low to mid-80s by noon, so warm. warm by evening, 86 to 90. a couple of thunderstorms are possible. next three days, our 9 weather alert codes, green, yellow and yellow. 89 tomorrow, a few storms. then 90 on wednesday. a little better chance for storms. 92 and that may below on thursday. even a better chance for thunderstorms, so we'll keep wednesday and thursday code yellow. next seven days, looks like this. friday, storms are still in the forecast. we have a defendant, yeah, that's going to try to get south of us and east of us by friday night. that should set the stage for a nice weekend. saturday, sunday and monday, we actually may start a streak in the 80s. upper 80s on saturday. upper 80s on sunday. upper 80s to near 90 on monday. don't go anywhere. dave is back with sports after this.

welcome back. in football lingo they call it first contact. it's the first hit you take in a real game and you never forget it. afterwards, you feel like you

belong. robert griffin, iii is about to get hit for real for the first time. can he with stand the physical contact? we'll see on thursday against buffalo. griffin says he plans on going more passing than running. that's good. but he may have to use those legs than he wants. another offensive lineman down. so rg3, you're looking forward to taking that first hit? >> if i don't get hit in the preseason, i would be very okay with that. i mean, it's football, and you play it, and hits are going to hurt. sometimes guys are going to unload on you. you've just got to be ready for that. so i'm not going to go in the game, you know, saying i hope they hit me as hard as they possibly can. that's not going to come out of my mouth. >> it ain't coming out of his mouth. maryland football becoming the new test kitchen for uniform changes. this is what they'll wear this season. home red, road white. new helmet design, too, with a streak and a maryland state flag down the middle. the stadium got a makeover, too. grass gone, field turf in.

easier on the joints. new look and randy says we've got a new attitude. >> i want our guys to understand that as we go into this year, it's a whole new year. when you take a look at the things that have transpired from an academic standpoint, from the field and from the uniforms that you see, all the things that i've envisioned, you know when i came here, you see it starting to come together. now what we've got to do is we've got to go out in the field and win. >> yeah, got to start envisioning more wins there, randy. nats fans, the next ten days could be it. washington plays houston. they're lousy. arizona is only so-so. the giants are somewhat tough. still, there's a chance here to separate from the braves who certainly have the tougher road to go. speaking of road, road trip in houston. adam laroche doing it, doing it well. nobody hotter in baseball right now.

literally. he played with a 100 degree temperature tonight. he's batting .478. matt moors gets it done. the game started later in central time zone. it is 4-3, nats the bottom the 9th right now. great falls, virginia, gang looks to be a legitimate threat in the little league series, leading 13-0. it's on to the regional semifinals. they beat new jersey 8-2. they play new york on tuesday. no-hitter in that baseball game, by the way. three kids combining on a no- hitter. >> wow. >> good for the little guys. >> we've got to go. be back in a minute. [ female announcer ] safeway presents

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if you've got a business, you didn't build that. somebody else made that happen. my father's hands didn't build this company. my hands didn't build this company. through hard work and a little bit of luck, we built this business. why are you demonizing us for it? it's time we had somebody who believes in us. someone who believes that achievement should be rewarded not punished. we need somebody who believes in america. [ romney ] i'm mitt romney and i approve this message.

>> nobody's googling usa basketball? how did they do against argentina tonight? >> they won by 24. >> that's what i like to hear. >> kobe and company. >> we're done. thanks for sticking around. don't forget we're always on at wusa9.com. letterman is up next with the funny top ten list. we're gone.