ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, December 16, 1995 TAG: 9512180064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FLOYD
SOURCE: SALLY HARRIS SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES
A 16-YEAR-OLD rescued his mother and father in a fire that gutted his family's Floyd County home. Now he's suffering from burns over 40 percent of his body.
Jonathan "Bear" Long didn't think before he ran into a burning house and pulled his mother and father to safety.
"It's just something I did," he said from his hospital bed at a burn center in Charlottesville.
That something makes his mother, Carol Long, misty-eyed even though it has been more than a week since the family's home in rural Floyd County was gutted by fire, more than a week since Bear pulled her and Geary Long to safety.
Bear suffered second- and third-degree burns over 40 percent of his body.
"If my brother hadn't had the strength to go back in the house, they would've died," said Mary Long, Bear's older sister.
The bedroom her father had been in fell through to the basement, where the fire appears to have started. The couch on which Bear had fallen asleep exploded, leaving only the springs. The television he was watching couldn't even be found. The house, less than a year old, was a total loss.
"It looks good from the outside," Mary Long said. "But there's nothing left inside."
On Dec. 6 sometime after 9 p.m., Bear Long, a 16-year-old junior at Floyd County High School, fell asleep while watching television in the family's house off U.S. 221, his sister said. When he woke up, the floor and coffee table were on fire.
So was Bear.
"My back was on fire," he said from the University of Virginia DeCamp Burn Center. "I could feel it burning my neck."
He ran up the stairs to tell his parents that the house was ablaze. At the top of the steps, he dropped to the floor and rolled. "That's what they say to do when you're on fire," he said by phone.
After he got his burning shirt off, he found his mother and told her about the fire; then he went to find his father. His father said he would get his mother out, so Bear ran outside.
His parents didn't come out.
Bear went around the house, and his father was hanging out a window asking where his mother was.
"I didn't know where she was, so I started hollering for her," Bear said. "I could hear her talking in the dining room."
The glass doors in the dining room were locked, so Bear tried to break them with the lid from the grill. When that failed and when his mother could not get the doors unlocked, Bear took a flower pot and broke the glass.
His mother, who had been trying to find the family's three dogs, was falling down in the thick smoke. He dragged her out by her legs.
"Then I went back inside," Bear said. "I was crawling on the floor so I could breathe." When he found his father, he, too, had been overcome by smoke. Bear dragged his father from the house by his arm.
"He got down on his hands and knees to get air, and then he pulled some more," Mary Long said. "He got them both out. He was completely burned."
In the chaos that followed, Bear got to the telephone just inside the glass doors, but it wouldn't work. Bear and his father tried to hook up a hose to put out the fire and also tried to flag down someone on the road, but to no avail. They still don't know who called the fire department or rescue squad, but both showed up.
The fire department got to the burning house in three to five minutes after the call came, according to Joe Robertson, secretary of Station One in Floyd. The cause of the fire is undetermined, he said. The fire department is not investigating further.
The house was insured, said Mary Long, who lives in Christiansburg.
The rescue squad took the family to Roanoke Memorial Hospital, according to Capt. Ford Wirt, emergency services coordinator. Bear said he didn't feel any pain until he got into the ambulance.
Geary Long was treated for the effects of smoke in his eyes, then released.
Bear and his mother were taken to the Charlottesville burn unit. It was a long ride, and Bear is still telling tales about his high-speed ambulance ride down Interstate 81.
Carol Long stayed at the hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation and was released Tuesday. Bear will be there awhile, maybe until after Christmas.
He's in good spirits, though he said he was sorry to miss a school field trip planned for Friday.
On Wednesday, he was decked out in green plaid shorts, showing off a leg that is gift-wrapped in bandages.
Although she has been discharged, Carol Long remains in Charlottesville with Bear, and Geary Long drives back and forth each day to work in Christiansburg, where he is an optician.
The family's three dogs - an 8-year-old poodle, a 2-year-old mixed terrier, and a 7-week-old black lab - perished in the fire.
"They're just like family," Carol Long said. But everyone else is fine, "and that's what counts. I'm thankful and appreciative of everything everybody has done."
The family lost everything except a few boxes of sentimental items they were able to salvage, but people have been donating clothes and money, Mary Long said.
"I want to thank everybody. People who don't even know us are helping."
Friends of the family have set up an account at First National Bank in Christiansburg to accept donations for the Longs.
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON/Staff "Bear" Long - with his mother, Carolby CNB- will be at the burn center for a while, maybe until after
Christmas. color