The Frederick News-Post, Md.
EMMITSBURG, Md. — A man injured in a house fire that killed two women in Emmitsburg was gradually recovering this week as officials ruled the fire an accident.
Donnie Jones, 69, the sole survivor of the Dec. 7 fire, was upgraded from critical to fair condition as of Tuesday, according to Andrea Baird, a spokeswoman for the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. His wife, 74-year-old Geraldine Rachelle Jones, was killed in the fire and 47-year-old Diana Lyn Meyer, who was rescued from another apartment in the burning building, died from her injuries at a burn unit in Pennsylvania the next day.
Investigators early on determined that the fire was likely not suspicious. The official ruling released by the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday revealed that the fire began when the rocking mechanism of a reclining chair compromised a live extension cord used to power decorative lights in the Joneses’ first-floor apartment.
The fire quickly spread from the underside of the chair to elsewhere in the living room and into the rest of the building, the release states.
The ruling was also consistent with what investigators learned from an interview with Donnie Jones on Thursday at the Shock Trauma Center, where he continues to recover, said Tim Clarke, a major with the sheriff’s office and president of Emmitsburg’s fire company, the Vigilant Hose Company.
“I think, as of the last discussion I had, he was expected to be transferred to a rehabilitation facility, so he is doing a lot better and is recovering,” Clarke said Tuesday.
The fire, which began at about 10 a.m. at 112 W. Main St., took dozens of teams of firefighters from five counties close to an hour to contain. Afterward, electrical engineers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives helped sheriff’s deputies and fire marshals investigate.
Investigators also ruled that another major fire in Emmitsburg on Dec. 2 was an accident, Vigilant Hose Company spokesman R. Wayne Powell said.
That fire took place at Paul’s Pit Stop at 150 S. Seton Ave. A light fixture in a storage room ignited several cases of beer that had been stacked up to the ceiling, Powell said.
No injuries were reported in the fire, thanks largely to Frederick County Sheriff’s Office Deputy 1st Class Ben Whitehouse, who was nearby when the fire began. Whitehouse ran into the building after learning there was a man trapped inside and helped pull the man to safety with the help of a customer from the liquor store.
In the wake of the fires, fire station volunteers and volunteers with the American Red Cross of Western Maryland organized a campaign to hand out smoke detectors to Emmitsburg residents.
A full investigation into the Dec. 7 fire revealed that both apartments were equipped with smoke detectors, one of which was operable and went off during the fire, according to Tuesday’s release. The detector in the Joneses’ downstairs apartment was too badly damaged in the fire to determine if it was working when the fire began, the release states.
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