Why did it take so long? One of the big questions in Spotsylvania County after fatal fire where woman stayed on the phone with 911.

Fireground audio

Transcript of fireground radio traffic

Transcript of Sandy Hill’s call to 911

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An investigation is underway after firefighters in Spotsylvania County, Virginia failed to find a woman who was on the phone, trapped in her house, while firefighters were inside searching. It apparently took repeated attempts and more than 20 minutes before firefighters finally found 43-year-old Sandy Hill on February 5.

Firefighters were able to rescue another person trapped in the fire. According to Dan Telvock with the Frederickburg Free Lance-Star, Hill was on the second floor of the 2000 square foor, four bedroom, Cape Cod. The paper has the fireground audio, audio of part of Sandy Hill’s conversation with 911 and transcripts of her calls. 

Here is an excerpt from Telvock’s article:

Carl Maurice, a Spotsylvania resident who spent 32 years with the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department, is the only expert who listened to the recordings and also viewed the exterior of the house.

“If someone presented this scenario to me in theory, I would have expected the victim to survive,” Maurice said. “The question everyone has to ask is ‘Why didn’t she?'”

Kevin Dillard, the administrative chief and spokesman of Chancellor Volunteer Fire and Rescue Department, initially sent an e-mail a few hours after the fire praising the 45 volunteers involved for an “awesome job.”

But this week, after learning more about the response, Dillard said he thinks an investigation is warranted.

Dillard said he knew few details when he sent the e-mail. Only after after some volunteers criticized the response two weeks ago did he begin to realize “serious” problems related to the response, he said.

For example, thermal imaging cameras that could have helped locate Hill and the teenager were available at the scene but were not used.

Dillard said a ladder was never deployed to Hill’s bedroom windows, and the crews seemed to be confused with the layout of the house and where Hill was trapped.

Dillard said ventilating the house to remove smoke came late in the process because there was a delay in announcing that the fire had been extinguished.

This incident seems to have a lot of similarities to a fire in Fairfax County in May, 2007 where firefighters were unable to find 49-year-old Debra Chiles on the top floor of her small townhouse. Chiles was in the bathroom on the phone with 911 as firefighters pulled up to battle a kitchen fire. The acting chief of the department admitted at the time that Chiles should have been found.