ROANOKE TIMES

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

DATE: TUESDAY, March 21, 1995                   TAG: 9503210112
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium


10 FAMILIES BURNED OUT OF CONDOS

As Judy Taylor stood watching her Salem condominium burn Monday afternoon, she wiped tears from her eyes. Still on the middle finger of her clenched left hand was the red plastic ring she had pulled an hour earlier to trip the fire alarm.

Her son, Andy, and her husband, Karl, both wrapped their arms around her.

"That's OK. It's just stuff," Andy Taylor said. "Mom and Dad got out. That's what's important."

One firefighter was overcome by the heat, but no one else was injured in the blaze that destroyed most of the 11-unit condominium building in the 2300 block of Wood Gate Lane in the Ridgewood Farms complex off Virginia 419.

One of the units was vacant; residents of the other 10 were left homeless, either by fire or water damage. But neighbors and residents quickly rallied to save each other from harm.

The fire started about 4 p.m., apparently on the south side of the building. .

Judy Taylor said she heard crackling and popping and looked out her window to see a bush and some mulch on fire. The flames leaped to the wood railing of a first-floor porch.

Taylor pulled the alarm and knocked on as many doors as she could to warn her neighbors to get out.

Across the street, Gladys Jones, 72, saw the flames and realized her friend, Leta Moore, 78, was asleep in the building.

"From the bottom all the way up, it was just rolling with smoke," Jones said.

She telephoned Moore to warn her, then called 911.

"It scared me," Jones said. Moore "was the first thing I thought of."

Moore said she tried to get out the door but found the hallway full of smoke. She fled onto her porch and was helped over the railing by Mike Consiglio, 20, and another man.

Ken Weddle, 45, had been home about 15 minutes when he saw cinders floating outside his second-floor window. He also found the hallway black with smoke and had to climb to safety from his balcony.

All he managed to save was the handset of a cordless phone and the clothes he was wearing: an undershirt, sweatpants and a pair of leather dress shoes.

Weddle said firefighters took too long, about 20 minutes, to start putting water on the fire.

"I lost everything and there's really no reason why I should have," he said.

Capt. Doug Conner of the Salem Fire Dept. disagreed.

He said the first truck on the scene was spraying the flames within three or four minutes.

"When we got there it was through the roof," he said.

The fire moved quickly through the building. Salem Assistant Fire Chief Pat Counts said that's often the case with fires in mostly wooden structures such as this one. Counts said Monday evening that it was too early to even guess at a cause.

Conner said the fire did not appear suspicious. He said damage to the structure was $450,000, not counting the contents.

Marlene Johnson and Joyce Brown, who live one street away from the building that burned, weren't taking any chances on losing their homes, too. When cinders from the fire began drifting toward their houses, they got out the garden hoses.

And when small flames appeared in a tree about 40 feet from their homes, they began spraying it. Firefighters were too busy to help them.

By 5:30 p.m., Kim Willard had returned home to see the remnants of her building charred and dripping with water. Willard, 31, was at her job as a dental hygienist when a nurse friend called her from nearby Lewis-Gale Hospital.

"She said, 'I don't want you to be upset, but your condo's on fire,'" Willard said.

Willard rushed to the scene, breaking an important appointment. She was supposed to close on a house. Nearly everything she owned was packed and inside the condo.

"I guess I won't need to call the moving truck now," she said, trying to smile. She had already called to cancel her renter's insurance - as of March 31.

By evening, some residents of the building still had not returned.

"I saw one of them on the way out when I was coming in about 15 minutes before the fire," said Consiglio, who delivered newspapers in the burned building. "I feel sorry for them."

Staff photographer Don Petersen contributed information to this story.



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