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By LOU HATTER
Rappahannock New* Staff Writer
Historic Washington House, a landmark since its construction in the mid 1700s, was devastated by fire late Friday afternoon.
The blaze apparently started in the rear of Charlie Eldred’s lighting restoration shop, according to Roger Roach, chief of the Washington Volunteer Department, who was in charge at the fire scene. A spark from a bench grinder which ignited a pile of buffing dust is believed to have caused the fire.
Firefighters and equipment from Washington arrived on the scene within minutes after the alarm was sounded, and found smoke pouring from the north side of the building. Firefighters who entered the building found the downstairs already thick with toxic smoke and the rear wall of the workshop a sheet of flame.
"We could see smoke as we (lame up from the firehouse,” Chief Roach said. “We knew we had a helluva fire.”
As ladders were put up to the second floor storage area and windows broken out to ventilate the upstairs, clouds of gray-black smoke rolled from the windows and seeped from beneath the eaves, nearly obscuring neighboring buildings.
Units from Sperryville, Amissville, Flint Hill and Castleton also responded on the first alarm, and a short time later a request for mutual aid assistance went out to the Salem VFD in Culpeper County.
Firefighters attempting to quell the flames with an interior attack were hampered by the narrow aisles through the workshop and storage area and the steep, winding stairway up to the second floor. Meanwhile, other volunteers attacked the flames from the roof both in front of and behind the shop.
According to Chief Koach, the building’s construction presented problems for the firefighters not found in more modem structures. The long, combination work-shop
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