ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 1, 1996 TAG: 9602010035
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW CASTLE
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
A FAMILY and a community are grieving over the deaths of two children in a house fire.
Two children died Tuesday as they apparently hid in a bedroom closet trying to get away from an intense fire that gutted their family's home just outside town.
Their parents, neighbors and firefighters searched frantically but couldn't find them as the flames spread through the one-story frame home. Firefighters said it was the worst house fire they'd ever seen.
``Everyone was trying to get them out - but they just couldn't,'' a neighbor, Roy Price, said.
Brent Crush, assistant chief of the Craig County-New Castle Volunteer Fire Department, said it was a natural reaction for the children to seek a hiding place away from the fire. ``I guess it was just instinct,'' he said. Even with all his training, Crush said, he might do the same thing if he were caught unaware by a fire in his own home.
The deaths of Harlie Gayle Howard, 3, and Christopher Thomas Howard, 5, have spread hurt and shock throughout this tight-knit community, which includes about 150 people in the town and perhaps 4,400 throughout Craig County.
``Because everybody knows everybody,'' Crush said. ``And any time it's children - whether you know them or not - it's rough.''
Wednesday afternoon, Crush stood in a cold wind in the Fire Department's parking lot with a couple of other volunteer firefighters. All of them were bleary-eyed from lack of sleep and the trauma of the children's deaths.
There wasn't much they could say - expect for how much they felt for the children's family. ``We're all in a kind of stupor,'' Crush said.
State police were investigating the cause Wednesday, but wouldn't talk about how they believe it started.
Fire investigators were in the house for several hours overnight Tuesday, but Lt. Jim Ruhland said they wanted to go back in daylight to go over the scene again. ``You see different things in the day than you do in the dark,'' he said.
He said investigators also were going door to door in the neighborhood to interview witnesses.
Crush said the house had a smoke detector, but he was unsure whether it had worked.
It was the second time in 10 days that young children had died in a house fire in and around the Roanoke Valley. Four children and their grandmother died Jan. 20 in a fire in Southeast Roanoke.
Craig County Sheriff B.B. McPherson said it had been at least 15 years since anyone had died in a house fire in the county.
Robert Perry, a state police assistant special agent, said that when the fire started around dusk Tuesday, the children's mother, Chastity Howard, was in the living room. Their father, Michael Howard, was asleep in a bedroom. The children apparently were in another bedroom at a back corner of the house.
The sheriff's dispatcher received the distress call at 5:36 p.m.
Crush and a few others were in the Fire Department's parking lot when the call went out. They suited up and headed for the house, which was about a mile away. He said they could see the smoke as they left the firehouse. On the way, the dispatcher radioed that there were victims inside the house.
Crush said it took them four minutes from the time the call went out to get to there. The fire was burning out of control.
Ernie Fowler, a member of the Upper Craigs Creek Volunteer Fire Department who lives not far from the Howards' house, heard the call on his portable scanner, jumped into his car and drove straight to the fire. ``As soon as I jumped out of the car,'' he said, ``I felt the heat from it. And I was probably 75 yards away.''
``For a house that size,'' Crush said, ``it was the hottest fire I'd ever been in - the smokiest, too. You just couldn't see.''
He and other firefighters went into the house with oxygen masks and tanks as the blaze was still raging. ``We had to make the attack and search at the same time,'' he said.
They fought their way through the house, came out, and then made a second entry.
This time, he saw the closet in the back bedroom and opened the door. A firetruck and other toys spilled out, but he didn't see the children in the darkness and smoke. They apparently were unconscious or already dead.
He checked the rest of the house and then came back to the bedroom. He said Fire Chief Ronnie Price had broken a window and crawled in without an oxygen mask. Price pulled open the closet door again, and he and Crush found the children on the floor.
A state medical examiner said they died of smoke inhalation.
Around midnight, a team of counselors from Roanoke came to New Castle to work with the grieving firefighters.
``Several of us have had a hard time dealing with it, myself included,'' Price said. ``It's not something you're prepared to handle. We've got a lot of folks who need help.''
He said the counseling team would come back again after the children's funeral on Friday.
The pain is even worse for the family. Friends and neighbors also were taking it hard.
``If it's a tragedy, we really pull together,'' said Lucille Price, who, with her husband, Roy, lives down the street from the Howards' home.
Michael Howard's parents live just down the road. The children passed the Prices' home on their way.
``They were just as cute as they could be,'' Lucille Price said. ``You couldn't ask for any better children. The little boy used to come sit in my lap, and I'd feed him candy.''
When the weather was warm, Roy Price said, Christopher Howard often was out in his front yard. ``Every time I'd go up the road, he'd holler at me,'' Price said. ``It's going to be hard when summer comes on.''
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: DON PETERSEN/Staff. 1. State Police Lt. Jim Ruhland saidby CNBthat investigators had yet to determine the cause of the house fire
on Wednesday. 2. Brent Crush/``You just couldn't see'' inside.
color. Graphic: Map by staff. color. KEYWORDS: FATALITY