Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 1, 1993 TAG: 9312010263
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RON BROWN and TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
As he approached the house at 16 11th Street S.W., he could see the flames and smoke rolling from the two-story frame home, covered with tar paper.
Out back, Robert King was I tried to smother it when it started, but it seemed like it just kept spreading. Jerry Vance Owner of house crawling from the house on his hands and knees. His hair was in flames.
Mason, 31, beat out the flames with his hands before carrying the slumping man to safety.
"It burned him to the scalp," Mason said.
King later sat on the curb beside Jerry Vance, the owner of the house.
Vance - who has lived in the house his entire life - said he tried to put out the blaze.
"I tried to smother it when it started, but it seemed like it just kept spreading," he said.
Both men were wrapped in blankets provided by neighbors as they watched their home being gutted.
"I didn't want them to sit on the cold sidewalk," said Cheryl Ferrell, Mason's girlfriend.
Ferrell said King is mute.
At first, he refused treatment and re-enacted with his hands for rescue workers how the fire had started.
King was taken to Community Hospital and was listed in stable condition Tuesday night.
Officials said the 4:30 p.m. blaze started when the two men tipped over a hot kerosene heater while fighting.
Fire officials said the house has been without electricity for four or five years.
Roanoke firefighters reported to dispatchers that the "whole back of the house was on fire" when they arrived.
As fire hoses sprayed water on the flames, smoke billowed several hundred feet into the sky. Flames occasionally trickled out between seams in the old house.
At first, Fire Department officials had worried that the fire might have been started by an arsonist.
Friday night, a storage building on Richmond Avenue Southwest that faces the back of Vance's house was ravaged by fire.
There had been at least two other suspicious blazes in the neighborhood in the past two weeks.
Making prophets of the firefighters, another fire was set by an arsonist just after 8 p.m. Tuesday at 517 11th St. S.W.
Someone stuffed a pillow under a staircase in the vacant rental home and lit it, said District Fire Chief Phillip Taylor.
"It's been a busy week," he said when asked about the string of fires. "This one was set. It sure wasn't spontaneous combustion.
"[The situation] is definitely under investigation by the fire marshal's office," he said.
by CNB