Four local fire departments battled a fire at a home northwest of Uniontown on Thursday. A resident died in the fire.

Crothersville-Vernon Township Volunteer Fire Department photo

A passerby reported an early morning fire Thursday at a home northwest of Uniontown, and firefighters said a resident died as a result of the blaze.

The name of the person has not been released pending notification of family. Some family members who were en route to the home at 839 S. County Road 1100E arrived not long after first responders.

Crothersville-Vernon Township Volunteer Fire Department Chief Ben Spencer said no one else was at home at the time of the fire.

The cause is still under investigation by the state fire marshal’s office.

Dispatch received the initial call at 4:43 a.m. Thursday, and Spencer said he was the first to arrive.

“When I got there, it was one story, the roof structure had already collapsed, so it had more than likely been burning for quite some time before the initial call,” he said, noting the brick home was engulfed in flames. “The house actually sat off a little distance from the road, so you had to be looking for it in order to see it.”

Spencer and a Jackson County Sheriff’s Department officer first went around the outside of the home to see if they could see anyone.

“Our normal procedure is search first. We want to make sure everybody is out. Fight fire is second,” Spencer said. “However, in this case, we could not access the home until we started putting flames out.”

He and another firefighter went into the home through the living room window.

“All of the windows were out of it because fire was blowing out of every single room,” Spencer said. “We were able to knock the fire down a little bit in order to get in.”

Once first responders learned someone could be in the home, Deputy Fire Chief Logan Isenhower and Firefighter Morgan Hill made entry into the back bedroom.

“I made entry with a Redding Township firefighter, and we did not get done with a complete search of the residence due to the fact of there was no floor,” Spencer said. “We went in and immediately fell into the crawl space because of the fire. Due to the roof collapsed down, who knows how long the fire was burning before we got dispatched to it, so the fire had a major jump-start on us.”

Firefighters had to back out but still go with suppression until they could see what they were doing, he said.

Spencer and Isenhower attempted to do a second search of the home, but they still were falling through the floor because there was nothing to walk on at that point.

Spencer then asked Hamilton Township Volunteer Fire Department to respond. That wound up being the fourth agency on scene, joining Crothersville-Vernon, Redding and Jackson-Washington.

“Now, we’ve got into an automatic aid agreement with other fire departments in the county so that while on any type of working house fire, we get three fire departments from the word go,” Spencer said.

Jackson County Emergency Medical Services also was at the scene on standby.

Firefighters completed their work at the scene around 11 a.m., and Crothersville-Vernon firetrucks were back in service around 12:20 p.m. after waiting on a state fire marshal’s office official to do an investigation.

Spencer said that office has to be notified any time there is an injury or a fatality of a civilian or a firefighter in a fire.

Mikey Blair, public information officer for Crothersville-Vernon, said the department used about 20,000 gallons of water in battling the blaze.

As hard as it was knowing there was a fatality, Spencer said the responding firefighters battled through.

“We weren’t concerned as far as the building coming down on us because it was already down, but we were concerned about falling through,” he said. “They didn’t hesitate. They were in there. They never got tired. Their bells would go off about their air being low. They come out and get a new bottle, and they were going right back in. I could not ask for a better crew to work with this morning, and they worked their tail off.”

It was very emotionally draining on everyone involved, and Spencer said he and Blair checked on firefighters multiple times at the scene and will continue to touch base with them.

“That did take a toll on all of the guys,” Spencer said. “We’ll closely monitor everybody. We’ll reach out to each other and make sure that we’re good.”