Sterling Volunteer Fire Company

Almost exactly eight days after this fire, units from Sterling, Ashburn, Fairfax, and Dulles Airport were again alerted for a townhouse fire in Oak Grove. Prior to units arriving on the scene, communications had received multiple calls and Wagon 611 reported heavy smoke in the area. Wagon 611 arrived first on the scene to find a detached garage to the rear of a townhouse fully involved with fire and extending up and across the rear of multiple townhouses. They quickly deployed two handlines to the rear and initiated an exterior attack focusing on the garage and controlling the spread of fire along the rear exterior walls of the townhouses. Engine 404 from Fairfax and TowerLadder 611 initiated an interior attack from the front. Other arriving units did the same in the neighboring townhouses. Wagon 611 reported that there was a damaged gas meter feeding the fire from the rear. Command requested a second alarm due to the number of townhouses and amount of fire involved. Firefighters from the three jurisdictions were able to work together to quickly and safely to keep the fire from spreading further. All units worked over several hours to extinguish all the fire, clean up, and deal with frozen hoses and cold wet feet. Special thanks go out to the crew from Canteen 11 that kept the coffee warm and flowing and to the units from Ashburn and Leesburg who transferred to cover both Sterling fire stations while Sterling units were working.

Photos: Tim Duckworth and Aaron Schulan

At 2212 hours on Thursday, February 21st, Duty Crew 2 was alerted to an explosion with possible structural collapse in the Sugarland Run subdivision. Engine 618, Wagon 611, Tower 611 and Quint 618 responded with support provided by additional units from Sterling Volunteer Rescue and Fairfax County.

The owner of the house was working on a project in which he needed to paint. He had stored cans of spray paint which he intended to use in the garage and they had subsequently froze due to the recent cold temperatures. In order to overcome this problem, the homeowner placed two of the spray cans in a pan of water and set it on the kitchen stove to warm up. He then went back upstairs to work on his project and simply lost track of time. He was reminded that the cans were on the stove when they overheated and “BLEVEd” (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion). This caused a flash fire in the kitchen and damaged the stove, cabinets, and much of the other kitchen contents. The pressure wave created by the explosion was significant enough to push out the rear wall of the house about 12 inches and broke most of the glass in the kitchen’s double sliding door and window. Luckily, all of the occupants of the house were upstairs, removed enough from the explosion to not suffer any injuries other than that of being embarrassed.

Although not in imminent danger of collapse, the house was deemed unsafe for occupancy. Personnel from Fairfax Rescue 439 were recently upgraded to a Technical Rescue Operations Team (TROT) and spent some time investigating the structure and damage in order to learn more and incorporate that knowledge into future training.

A view of the kitchen wall from both the exterior and interior shows the extent of the damage, and damage from the flash fire.
Photos by Jonathan Hickman

Wednesday, February 20th, 20:20hrs:
Duty Crew 1 was alerted to a house fire off Oak Grove Road near the Herndon town limits. Dispatch reported that they were receiving multiple calls describing a well involved detached garage.

To make things interesting, the callers were reporting two near – but different – locations of the fire. Dispatch alerted a second structural assignment to respond to the second reported address in case there were indeed two separate fires. After units arrived on scene, it was determined that both reports and subsequent dispatches were for the same fire.

The initial dispatch included two command officers, Sterling Fire Deputy Chief 618 and Loudoun County Battalion Chief 601. When the second dispatch was sounded, the battalion chief was able to split off and manage the additional units. This proved to be a very important success point of this call as the greatest challenge was managing all of the incoming units.

Fairfax Engine 404 was the closest engine to the fire and arrived on scene first to make a quick knockdown. They were supported by units from Dulles Airport and additional engines from Fairfax County. Sterling Fire’s Engine 611 and Tower 611 rounded out the assignment. Even though the fire was located in Sterling’s first due, the long standing automatic mutual aid agreements in place put the closest engine on scene first and all units worked well to quickly extinguish the fire.

E611 and TL611 on the scene, and a picture from the next day.