Woman dies in Brave house fire
Virginia Cumberledge, 59, woman died Thursday morning in this house fire in Brave.
Virginia Cumberledge, 59, was killed Thursday morning in a fire at this house at 115 Lantz Alley, Brave.
BRAVE – A 59-year-old woman died Thursday morning in a fire at her house in Brave, Wayne Township.
Virginia Cumberledge was pronounced dead at the scene at 10:15 a.m. by Greene County Deputy Coroner Mary Lewis. An autopsy was performed Thursday afternoon by Dr. Cyril Wecht in Pittsburgh, Lewis said.
The state police fire marshal was called to investigate the fire, which started about 8:30 a.m. at Cumberledge’s home at 115 Lantz Alley.
Cumberledge lived in the two-story house with her husband, Eugene, neighbors said.
Eugene Cumberledge left for work in Mt. Morris about 8 a.m. Shortly afterward, neighbors said, they saw smoke coming from the house.
One neighbor, John Black, said he and his son, John, and a friend, Ronnie Jaggie, ran to the house and pounded on the doors and windows, but no one answered.
“We tried to get in, but we couldn’t get in,” Black said.
The doors and windows were hot and flames could be seen in the kitchen, he said.
“We were afraid to knock the windows out,” Black said.
All the windows in the house were closed. The men thought if they allowed air inside the house it might “explode” in flames, he said.
“We didn’t know exactly what to do,” he said.
A neighbor called 911, and a fire truck soon arrived. Black said he, his son and Jaggie assisted the fireman as he entered the house and doused the blaze.
John Brookover, president of Wayne Township Volunteer Fire Co., was the first on scene.
“There was smoke pouring out of the eaves at the top of the house,” Brookover said.
Brookover, who lives nearby, was the only member of his company to respond. He said the department’s other firefighters were at work, and he was assisted by the neighbors.
After arriving on scene, Brookover said, he saw the fire was burning in the kitchen at the side of the house. Brookover said he entered through the kitchen door and was able to knock down the fire fairly quickly. Shortly after, the neighbors broke through the front door and found Cumberledge lying on the floor. They carried her outside.
“There was no fire in the room, just smoke in the room she was in,” Brookover said.
Most of the fire damage was confined to the kitchen, he said. The rest of the house sustained smoke and heat damage.
The Blacksville (W.Va.) Volunteer Fire Department, which arrived next, extinguished a few “hot spots” that remained inside the house, Bookover said. Firefighters from Center Township and New Freeport also assisted at the scene.
Brookover said the Blacks and Jaggie made the right decision of not breaking in the doors or windows.
“If they had bashed in a window without having water here,” he said, “it would have went up (in flames).”
Family members who were at the scene Thursday morning declined comment.