Even Following Loss Of Home In Fire, Alexander Concerned With Others Who Have Less Than She

By Debra McCown
Reporter / Bristol Herald Courier
Published: November 19, 2008

Safe heating tips
—As the name implies, space heaters need space; keep all combustibles at least 3 feet away from any heat source.
—Buy space heaters with automatic shut-off and tip-over shut-off.
—Turn off portable heaters when leaving the room or going to bed.
—Never use flammable liquids in a fireplace.
—Use only seasoned hardwood in a fireplace.
—Build small fires that burn completely and produce less smoke.
—Have chimneys professionally inspected each year.
Sources: Virginia Department of Fire Programs, Tennessee Fire Marshall’s Office, U.S. Fire Administration

GLADE SPRING, Va. – Fire that destroyed a rural Washington County couple’s home might have been prevented, relatives say, if someone – anyone – had responded to requests for heating assistance.

When Kenneth and Shirley Alexander couldn’t afford to heat their home and could find no help from local agencies, family members came together to help them make do, by building an addition onto their old single-wide trailer to accommodate an old wood stove.

That stove was most likely the cause of Tuesday afternoon’s blaze, said Kermit Turner, a captain for the Damascus Fire Department. He said while no one was injured in the fire, the house was a total loss.

The Alexanders’ daughter Susan Ray, who lives next door said her parents had a furnace.

“She tried to get social services to fix her furnace, and they wouldn’t,” Ray said of her mother. “So she tried to get a laser heater, but they told her she made too much money because Dad is a truck driver. She had to scrape and bum and put in a wood heater, and that’s what caused it.”

Shirley Alexander’s brother Howard Blevins said relatives all pitched in to install the stove about three months ago.

Shirley Alexander, 58, said she was using an old wood stove she’d pulled out of storage in an outbuilding; her daughter had used the stove while living in a nearby house that had been her great-grandmother’s and still has no indoor plumbing.

“We put it in there and we were going to use it until we come up with the money to buy a brand new stove,” Alexander said.

She was sobbing as relatives led her, wrapped in a blanket, past the smoldering ruins of her home to Ray’s trailer next door.

She’d been out taking her father to the doctor and helping him apply for heating assistance; her husband, a truck driver, was on the road. So no one was home Tuesday when a relative living nearby spotted the fire and called for help.

“Trust me, we’ll find them a place to stay. They won’t be out in the cold,” said her sister Patricia Taylor.

Taylor said Shirley Alexander has always been there to help others – and yet she couldn’t find help with something as basic as heat.

The home is off of Barrtown Road in Widener’s Valley, a section of Washington County where aging trailers and rundown shacks still outnumber newer homes.

As relatives gathered to comfort Shirley Alexander and dig through the mess for family heirlooms, chickens were scratching the snow-covered ground around the smoldering remains. In some areas, it was unclear what was snow and what was ash coming down in the yard, which was littered with toys belonging to the Alexanders’ three grandchildren.

Miraculously, a trunk containing treasured belongings of Ken Alexander’s deceased father was pulled from the wreckage with only some damage by firefighter T.J. Taylor, a nephew.

Shirley Alexander cradled an old billfold that had somehow survived undamaged – a reminder in a difficult time that things could be worse.

“Ken’s dad got killed back in ‘79 when his dump truck got hit with a train, and his billfold, he’s kept up with it and everything for 29 years,” Shirley Alexander said. “He had some money in it that I don’t care how bad things got, I don’t think it ever got so bad that you’d ever think about going and getting it and spending it.”

She said she and her husband, who’s now 60, couldn’t afford a new trailer; they bought this one damaged about 20 years ago and family members helped them gut it and rebuild it into a home.

“When we got the trailer, it had been burnt,” she said. “We remodeled it and started from scratch, I raised my family in it and everybody coming and going that needed a place to live, really.”

She said she’s lived her whole life in Widener’s Valley and never had insurance. She’s not sure how to go about replacing a home.

But even looking over the smoldering wreckage, she said she’s just thankful no one was hurt, and she’s worried about those in a worse situation than her own.

“There’s a lot of people out there that’s in worse shape than I am,” Shirley Alexander said. “The elderly people out here ain’t going to afford heat this winter…. It’s going to put them in a bind.”

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