CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. – A Christiansburg man who lost everything in a house fire is recovering in a Richmond intensive care unit.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, devastation hit in Christiansburg for Bobby Truitt.
“It was an old house that we knew, eventually one day, would go, but never dreamed it would go that way,” said Monica Wilt, property owner and witness to the fire. “It immediately went to the roof and it was in flames from the beginning.”
She said they were woken up in the middle of the night to Bobby knocking on their door and telling them to call 911.
“He was covered in soot,” said Wilt. “[He] said ‘call 911,′ and I could see the glow in the kitchen before I got to the door to open it.”
She said after they called 911, due to their location, it took time for firefighters to get there.
“It always takes longer in an emergency for anyone to get here than you think it should,” Wilt said.
She said while they waited, she felt helpless.
“I felt like I should be doing something and there was nothing I could do,” said Wilt. “We called 911, we got him across the driveway to a safe spot and there was nothing you could do but watch it.”
She said once emergency personnel arrived, they started to work on containing the fire, but with how rural it is, there are no fire hydrants.
“They had to pull in fire trucks from further out in order to get enough water to pump down to the trucks here,” Wilt said.
She said this was also when she learned Bobby was in worse shape than she thought.
“The soot was actually from where his beard and his hair had been on fire,” said Wilt. “It didn’t dawn on me that he was so bad off. It turned out they were trying to call the Life Flight to come fly him to Wake Forest. He’s on a ventilator and they were worried about burns in his mouth.”
She said right now, they are worried about Bobby and his recovery.
We’ve reached out to the Christiansburg Fire Department for comment on the fire and we are still waiting to hear back.
A GoFundMe has been set up to support Bobby — you can find it here.