House Fire In Loudoun Injures Six Firefighters

Resident Apparently Out When Blaze Guts Home

Three firefighters suffered serious burns and three others were also injured yesterday in an effort to quell a raging blaze that tore through a house in Loudoun County near Leesburg, authorities said.

Firefighters arrived about 1 p.m. on Meadowood Court in the Potomac Station development to find the attic of the house burning fiercely, said Mary L. Maguire, county fire department spokeswoman.

After four firefighters went inside, she said, "things started to deteriorate rapidly. They called for a Mayday," an emergency distress call.

"They were in trouble, and they were getting out," she said. "As they did, those injuries occurred."

The most seriously injured were sent to the burn unit at Washington Hospital Center, where their conditions were described as stable last night by Maguire.

One firefighter was being kept overnight at Inova Loudoun Hospital at Lansdowne. The four hospitalized firefighters were all based in Ashburn, Maguire said.

Another was treated at Inova Loudoun's Cornwall campus and released, she said. A sixth firefighter was treated at the scene.

Details of their injuries and how they occurred were not immediately available.

Some neighbors said the blaze appeared to have gutted the two-story Williamsburg colonial, leaving it uninhabitable.

The cause of the fire could not be learned immediately. Neighbors said investigators were going through the first floor of the house last night.

The fire, which apparently broke out shortly before 1 p.m., was engulfing the house as firefighters began arriving, witnesses said.

"It was huge," neighbor Diana Stumm said. "I've never seen anything like that. It was awful."