By LOU HATTER

By LOU HATTER

Rappahannock News Staff Writer

Eleven-year-old Danielle Lee Sheetz was killed last Thursday night in a fire which consumed the small frame house she lived in on Rt. 729 near Viewtown.

According to Chief Paul Poling of the Amissville Volunteer Fire Department, who was in command at the fire scene, the house was fully involved when the firet fire truck from Amissville arrived on the scene. He said that the fire was visible from about one mile away as the first trucks approached. The back end of the house, where Danielle’s bedroom was located, was already engulfed. “We don’t know how long the fire had been burning before the alarm sounded - it came in as a fully involved structure fire.”

Sheriff John Henry Woodward, who responded with the Castleton Volunteer Fire Department, added that flames were shooting out all the windows when he arrived right after the first Amissville trucks.

Chief Poling said that firefighters attempted to rescue the girl, who was trapped in her bedroom, but were forced back by the intense heat of the fire. The only access to the room from the outside was through a window. The firefighters were able to break through a screen which covered the window but the intense flames and heat prevented them from getting inside.

They then tried, and eventually were able to reach her, from the front of the house, but by that time she had succumbed to the dense smoke and heat. “We did all we could," Sheriff Woodward said, “but the fire was so intense that the firefighters couldn’t get into the room where she was trapped.” She was pronounced dead at the scene by Rappahannock County Medical Examiner Dr. Werner Krebser.

The sheriff said that the fire was reported by the Sheetz’s next door neighbor, Patty Jolliffe. Apparently,

(See FIRE, p. 18)