By Derek Kravitz
Washington Post
LOUDOUN, Va. — A charred coat and helmet, propped up on a table outside an elegant conference room in Lansdowne, looked like a long-lost relic from a bygone era of firefighting.
But to Lt. John “Bones” Earley, it was a reminder of his brush with death 10 months ago. With friends and colleagues huddled nearby Tuesday afternoon, Earley examined his ash-covered turnout gear for about 15 minutes, gingerly poking and prodding its singed sleeves and buttons.
He then peeked into the front pocket. Nothing there. He smiled.
Earley, one of seven firefighters injured in a house fire Memorial Day, was awarded the Loudoun County Chamber of Commerce’s Gold Medal of Valor. The award, presented for only the third time in 24 years, is the chamber’s highest heroism honor for law enforcement and fire personnel.
“It’s very emotional to have to relive that type of event,” said Loudoun Fire Chief Joseph E. Pozzo. “But they have all done a wonderful job of coming back.”
More than 400 business leaders and public officials crowded a conference room in Lansdowne’s National Conference Center for the ceremony. Earley was one of 44 men and women to receive awards and citations. An amateur video of the fire was played, showing firefighters entering the house and smoke billowing from the attic.
Some of the firefighters present chose not to watch the video, which was filmed by a neighbor. Earley, whose hands were still bandaged, did not speak during the event.
“It’s just his personality,” Pozzo said. “He’s a quiet leader.”
Earley was the most seriously injured during the May 25 blaze at a two-story colonial-style house near Leesburg.
The single-family house on Meadowood Court in the Potomac Station neighborhood caught fire after a cigarette had been thrown on a deck the previous afternoon, authorities said. The four-person crew entered the house through the front door, extinguished flames and climbed the main staircase. As the flames moved from a rear sunroom toward the foyer and the staircase, the crew’s hose burned, rendering it useless, and a portable radio malfunctioned because of the intense heat.
The trapped firefighters called in a Mayday signal, ran to a bedroom and broke a window. Three of the crew members slid down a 24-foot extension ladder to safety; all suffered second-degree burns.
Earley, a career firefighter, was cut off from the rest of the team. He ran to the master bedroom and tried unsuccessfully to break a window, which was made of double-paned safety glass similar to the material used for airplane cockpit windows. He then ran through the second floor of the house before jumping out a window into the back yard, his clothes ablaze.
Two firefighters ran to him and extinguished the flames with their bodies and gloved hands.
Earley spent more than two months at Washington Hospital Center with first- and second-degree burns on his neck and hands. Several fundraisers were held to help his family, and he has since returned to work, logging part-time hours at the Loudoun fire and rescue department’s Leesburg training center.
A three-month investigation of the fire resulted in a lengthy report released in September that said the response to the blaze was plagued by communication errors, the malfunctioning hose and radio and confusion among the overwhelmed three-person crew that initially responded to the fire.
In the aftermath, the Loudoun County Department of Fire, Rescue and Management, whose 1,900 employees are a mix of career and volunteer personnel, made a number of policy changes, including requiring at least four firefighters on trucks and in rescue companies responding to a fire.
On Tuesday, the chamber also awarded high honors to the other three trapped firefighters: a Silver Medal to Capt. Micah Kiger and Bronze Medals to firefighter/EMT workers Jackie Shingleton and Brandy Lapole.
A Purcellville firefighter, Lloyd “Billy” Coburn III, was awarded a Silver Medal for an unrelated incident. On May 6, Coburn scaled the roof of a downtown Purcellville restaurant, without a ladder or rope, to rescue two stranded roof painters, one of whom had been shocked by a malfunctioning high-voltage power transmission line.
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