House

A house fire in the Hayfield area of Fairfax County killed 30 nonpoisonous snakes Thursday morning. But no people were injured, and firefighters quickly extinguished the blaze, authorities said.

Six snakes and several scorpions survived the fire, which broke out in the bedroom of Zack Frodge, 18, on Shropshire Court, just behind Hayfield Elementary School. Frodge said he took in snakes from people who could no longer handle them and found others. He sold them or released them into the wild when they outgrew their boxes or cages, he said.

There is no law against keeping nonpoisonous, or nonvenomous, snakes, and there is no limit on how many may be kept, said Fairfax animal control officers, who helped firefighters rescue the surviving snakes.

The fire erupted in the single-family home about 8:30 a.m., authorities said, and a preliminary investigation indicated that it might have been caused by one of the power strips that Frodge used to power lights and heating pads in his bedroom to keep the snakes warm. Shannon Frodge, 16, said she thought she smelled something odd, left her bedroom and alerted her family to the fire. Her mother and two siblings escaped unharmed, and fire damage was limited mainly to the upstairs of the house.

Fire Capt. Leo Burt said he and other firefighters were working their way through dark smoke when a commander radioed him to "be advised there are close to 30 nonpoisonous snakes" in the home's upper level. When Burt found the cages and boxes of snakes, he radioed back, "Are you sure they're nonpoisonous?"

Zack Frodge was crestfallen that so many of his snakes had perished. He said he has been caring for snakes since he was 13 and has kept as many as 60 at one time.

"Everything I owned was in that room," he said. He was not sleeping in the room at the time, at his mother's insistence.