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Spotsylvania County Fire and Rescue Department launches investigation of a fatal house fire on Feb. 5
AUDIO: Click here to listen to audio of the fire dispatch call.
TRANSCRIPT 1: Call from victim to 911 in fatal fire TRANSCRIPT 2: View the text of the fire dispatch call.
Editor's Note: This audio file contains a portion of Sandy Hill’s communication with a 911 dispatcher during the Feb. 5 fire that claimed Hill’s life. Some of the contents may be disturbing to listeners. Free Lance–Star editors believe this information is important to understanding what happened in the rescue attempt. Hill’s immediate family members were informed of the newspaper’s plans. Her mother, Lillian Hill, said she was OK with posting the recording if it helps save lives in the future.
Alternative content Date published: 3/10/2010
By DAN TELVOCK Spotsylvania County Fire and Rescue Chief Chris Eudailey is launching an internal investigation of a fatal house fire in which the victim pleaded for help over the phone as rescuers searched other areas of the house. The investigation comes more than a month after the Feb. 5 fire on Spotswood Furnace Road and two weeks after The Free Lance-Star requested recordings of radio dispatches and 911 calls from the scene. Eudailey said such an investigation has never happened for a fire incident in his 21 years with the department. He said this review will help him determine why it took volunteer rescuers 20 minutes to find 43-year-old Sandy Hill, even though she had been on the phone with a 911 dispatcher trying to direct firefighters to her second-floor bedroom. Hill was unconscious by the time rescuers reached her. The Geico employee and local actress was pronounced dead at Mary Washington Hospital. Hill's roommate, Christine Brown, got out of the house on her own without injury and called 911 at about 12:54 a.m. A search team entered the house at 1:01 a.m., four minutes after the call was dispatched ( TRANSCRIPT | AUDIO ) and one minute after the first fire engine arrived at the scene near Riverbend High School. Brown's 17-year-old daughter was rescued through a master bedroom window on the first floor in about 13 minutes. During this time, Hill was upstairs on her cell phone telling a dispatcher that she was in the back bedroom to the left of the stairwell. That information was relayed several times to the fire-and-rescue volunteers.
The fire started in a downstairs hallway in the 2,000-square-foot, two-story home, said Fire Marshal Brian Seay. The occupants were renting the four-bedroom, two-bath Cape Cod home, built in 1953. The cause was a small electric coil heater sitting on a box, Seay said. He said the fire was small and contained to the hallway, but there was heavy smoke damage throughout the home. The battery in a smoke detector downstairs was dead, he said.
Read more stories about Spotsylvania Date published: 3/10/2010
Citizens who want to view the internal turmoil with the voulteer agencies can do so at www.thewatchdesk.com, go to Virginia, then to Spotsylvania County..Enjoy!!
This County doesn't have enough appropiately trained volunters to even consider staffing specialty apparatus. How about those less than 1 year on the job volunter officers at Co.1, or the volunters that cannot pass DPO but are operating firetrucks. Again absolutly no standards for volunteers because they cry and [*#@!] when standards are imposed or because my daddy is friends with the volly fire chief. Wake up citizens this is the service you want...
You want "top notch" service, that apparently you don't think a volunteer can provide. Yet you say let them bring the speciality pieces (ladder trucks, tankers, etc). Those trucks cost MORE than a pumper and lets not forget you have to have additional training and CERTIFICATES to operate those trucks. And if you think a volunteer is 16-20 years old, Do you think they can do it?? I know the answer.. The answer is YES...
You say you want experience, not certificates. I think it is safe to say - most of the career staff in Spotsy was at one time volunteers here and got there training here. They have the certificates to prove it (they look the same as the ones the volunteers get now). Volunteers get career firefighting jobs, and yet still some volunteer their time at other stations - does this make them inadequate when they are volunteering?
As a tax payer when I call 911 I want top notch service and I want it in a timely matter. I think the first trucks out of the station should be 24/7 career personnel and then let the short handed volunteer personnel bring the extra units like those ladder trucks, tanker trucks, and such.
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