Fire that damaged Whitley Deputy’s home was an accident

Williamsburg fire officials say that neither foul play nor arson is suspected in a fire that severely damaged the home of a Whitley County Sheriff’s Detective early Thursday morning.

About 1:15 a.m. Thursday, a neighbor reported that Denny Shelley’s home at 279 North 10th Street was on fire.
About three minutes later the first of 13 firefighters responded to the scene.

"When we arrived the house was pretty much engulfed in smoke," said Williamsburg Fire Chief James Privett. "We had smoke coming out of the eves of the attic and the top roof."

Privett said the home appeared have been burning for a quite some time and was near a flash over point where heat had built up and nearly the whole house was ready to go up in flames.

Firefighters put on breathing equipment, entered the home, and contained the fire damage primarily to one room, although the rest of the house suffered heat and smoke damage.

Firefighters were on the scene until shortly after 3 a.m., and returned later Thursday investigating the cause of the fire.

Privett said that Kentucky State Police Arson Investigator Pat Alford and Kentucky Deputy State Fire Marshal Doug Silvers were called to the scene strictly to help determine the cause of the blaze, and that neither foul play nor arson is suspected.
Privett said that the exact cause of the blaze is still undetermined, but that it started in a side room containing a hot water heater and a kerosene heater.

"He had some water lines to break in the house, and he said that he had been working on those for a couple of days," Privett said.

"He wasn’t home at the time. He was trying to get the floors dried back up from where the waterlines had broken and soaked the floor."

No one was injured fighting the blaze.