
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 11, 1993                   TAG: 9312110209
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: TODD JACKSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEIGHBORHOOD HIT AGAIN

Neighbors are starting to look out for each other as the rash of fires in the 11th Street Southwest area continued Friday night.

Firefighters contained a blaze inside an inhabited rental home at 1106-1108 Campbell Avenue S.W. just after 11 p.m., only an hour after another fire occurred at a vacant rental home at 517 11th St. S.W., the third there in the last seven days.

Friday's fires bring to seven the number of suspicious blazes in the area in the last several weeks.

"We're concerned," said District Fire Chief Bev Mitchell. "The investigation of these [Friday's] fires will continue, but it's pretty obvious they were set."

As firefighters scurried through the house, residents watched and worried.

Carl Burchett, who lives behind the Campbell Avenue home, saw the fire in the basement, called 911 and notified the people who live there. Burchett said he and his wife are thinking about sleeping in shifts.

"It was just a little fire, but by the time I could call 911 and come back outside, it just erupted," Burchett said. "If this keeps up, somebody is going to get hurt."

Larry Gearheart, a resident of the home, said he heard Burchett knocking on his door at 10:30 p.m.

"We didn't even smell or see the smoke," Gearheart said. "I think we have a pyromaniac running around here. I'm getting a little worried about it."

Twelve-year-old Michael Christian lives across the street from Gearheart. "I heard the fire trucks and I said to myself, `Oh, I hope it's not us,' " he said.

Mitchell said the fire at the Campbell Avenue house was set in an attached, enclosed porch. The small blaze at the vacant home on 11th Street was set underneath the back porch, Mitchell said.

Police have charged a 15-year-old boy in connection with one of the seven suspicious fires - a Nov. 25 blaze that destroyed a vacant house in the 1000 block of Patterson Avenue.

The other two fires determined as arson were set at a storage shed on Richmond Avenue and a vacant home in the 900 block of Rorer Avenue.

by CNB