By Taylor Boyd
A man died following an early morning residential structure fire a house fire at 154 Memory Lane near the North Carolina-Virginia border on Sunday, Dec. 7.
Patrick County Sheriff Dan Smith said the 911 Communication Center received a call on Sunday, at 3:01 a.m., from a caller stating that the residence was on fire. Multiple fire departments were dispatched and responded to fight the blaze.
Smith said the man was unable to escape and died inside the structure.
“Out of respect for the family, we are not releasing the name of the victim until proper notification has been made,” Smith said in a Sunday morning release.
Patrick Springs Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Clint Weidhaas said fire officials received the call around 3:04 a.m. to report a mobile home fire with an entrapment.
“A resident called in advising her loved one was in the trailer still,” he said.
Moorefield Store Volunteer Fire Department, Patrick Springs, Stuart Volunteer Fire Department, and CCDF Volunteer Fire Department were initially toned out. As Patrick Springs had a crew at the station, Weidhaas said it had a truck on route within minutes.
Weidhaas was the first to arrive at the scene at 3:15 a.m. He said the residence was two mobile homes put together in an L-shaped fashion.
“The mobile home nearest to the road was fully involved, and the mobile home in the rear was partially involved,” he said. “First responders from Patrick Springs initiated a VES (Vent, Enter, Search) on the rear mobile home as it was the only part that was not on fire yet, and we were unsure where he was.”
Weidhaas said the firefighters were met with extreme heat as the search for the resident was conducted.
“We were unsuccessful in locating him initially. There was a little confusion about where he was at first, because we did not have the other homeowner there. She’d actually ran up the road, a quarter mile away, to the neighbor, so I didn’t have that information when I first got on scene,” Weidhaas said.
When fire crews received word that the man stayed inside the front structure, Weidhaas said it had basically completely collapsed, with the roof down on the floor.
“So, firefighters had to meticulously remove debris to locate the deceased resident. It took about an hour to locate him,” he said.
Moorefield Store responded with units and three personnel, Patrick Springs had an engine and 10 personnel, Stuart had two engines and six personnel, and CCDF responded with tankers and two personnel.
Weidhaas said Patrick County also contacted Stokes County for the assistance of the Lawsonville and Sandy Ridge volunteer fire departments. Sandy Ridge responded with units and 11 personnel, and Lawsonville responded with units and five personnel.
Because the structure was in a rural area, Weidhaas said firefighters used a pond at Peters Creek Church off Route 8 in Stokes County as a fill site to get water.
It was “about a mile away from the scene. So, the turnaround time for the tankers was good. It wasn’t a long travel time to go get water, so that was a plus. I’m not sure how many gallons we used, but we did have six tankers” working to extinguish the blaze, he said.
Weidhaas estimated firefighters were on scene until about 5:45 a.m.
Investigators from the Patrick County Sheriff’s Office are being as
sisted by Virginia State Police fire investigators to determine the cause and origin of the fire, according to Weidhaas and Smith.
“At this point in the investigation, nothing stands out as being malicious or suspicious,” the sheriff stated. “Anytime there’s a fatality like that, a lot of times your localities will call upon the state police for more assistance because you’re bringing in more experience to the investigation. The state police have some other resources they can pull on, too,” Weidhaas said, adding the agent was called out of Roanoke.
