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Haymarket officers receive valor awards
Two Haymarket police officers were recognized for valor Monday night at town hall for rushing into a burning house on Jan. 20 in an attempt to save those who lived inside.According to accounts from the officers and local residents, sometime around 6:30 p.m., a man pounded on the back door of the police station. When no one answered, he ran.
But when officer Tony Gregg exited the station restroom and stepped outside, he could see one of the houses directly behind the station was ablaze.
Gregg rushed to his squad car and, three left turns later, arrived in front of 14709 Dogwood Park Lane, seconds before fellow officer Warren Houde (pronounced “how-de”) pulled up in a second squad car after receiving a call from dispatch.
No one was sure just how many people had been inside the house when fire from an unattended candle spread, but it turned out there had been two children and their grandmother at the home.
All accounts have the Hispanic-born grandmother speaking little English and being on the phone with her son, the property owner, who was working at Dulles International Airport.
Though smoke alarms sounded, the woman did not exit the house. Witnesses said she did not want to leave, though the police report filed by Houde states “she went upstairs and noticed that the upstairs was filled with smoke, and she saw the fire and then exited the residence.”
Neighbor Ashley Gentry said the woman stayed inside, and Gregg said he had to place his hands on her arm and shoulder to physically guide her out of the house.
The officers described the scene inside the house as being almost pitch black with three-to-five feet of visibility.
Houde searched the upstairs to check for any other people. He said he was in there for a few minutes, though it felt like an eternity.
“Basically, if you turn the lights off in this room and set a smoke bomb, is what it was like.," he said on Monday. "But add about 500 degrees.”
“The whole entire upstairs was entirely engulfed in flames.” added Gregg.
By the time the police officers arrived, the children were already out of the house. The story about when and how the grandmother exited the house varies depending on who tells it.
Gregg said he entered through the garage, which led to the kitchen.
“[I] run in, and I observe a Hispanic elderly female in the center of the kitchen where there’s black smoke everywhere. And she’s just yelling and screaming, and I’m yelling and screaming at her. Unbeknownst to me, she doesn’t understand English. So I grab her and physically pull her out while he was looking for the grandkids, basically, upstairs. They were supposedly upstairs.”
Gentry said that her fiance Michael Pittman, the man who initially knocked on the back door of the police station, had been the one who took the children out of the burning house after her stepfather Doug Jordan tried to put out the fire.
“But the grandmother would not come out of the house. I don’t know if she was just freaked out, or what. I had to go in the house and grab her,” she said.
Pittman brought the woman out to the garage, which was when Gentry took her next door to be with her grandchildren.
The fire spread from the upstairs of the grandmother’s house over to the Gentry's house.
They all moved over to the house of Chris and Louise Johnson.
“Well, we were kind of all telling her ‘Get out of the house,’” said Chris. “It was then that somebody yelled that they thought there was still somebody else still inside the house.”
Fire officials arrived between 8 and 9.5 minutes after the first 911 call.
According to Gentry, firefighters did not begin to put out the blaze when they first arrived as they determined they needed a different type of truck.
At least two 911 calls were placed, including one from Gentry and one from another neighbor. Gentry said the process took so long that she eventually hung up.
As of Monday, the house at 14709 Dogwood Park Lane did not have any tenants in it as the structural damage was too severe.
A blue tarp hung over the right side of Gentry’s house to cover damages there.
In the end, Houde and Gregg both received red, white and blue pins reading “valor” in the middle, along with certificates of appreciation from the Haymarket Town Council, signed by Chief James Roop and Mayor Pamela Stutz.
"According to Gentry, firefighters did not begin to put out the blaze when they first arrived as they determined they needed a different type of truck." I believe Ms. Gentry is confused about how the fire department operates. A house fire in PWC gets multiple types fire trucks, engines (with water), trucks (with ladders) and rescues and chiefs. This article seems to imply that the fire department does not know their job. I can assure you, this is a highly coordinated effort and printing statements like the above will only cause public outcry and confusion without obtaining the full perspective of a fire emergency.
Posted by DNTBL8
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