WDBJ7 Archive: 1976 Spanish Trace Apartment fire

ROANOKE, Va. (WDBJ) - Roanokers were already on edge in early 1976, after more than a dozen apartment fires in just one month.

Then on the night of January 28, fire broke out in one of the buildings at the Spanish Trace Apartments located near the corner of Peters Creek Road and Shenandoah Avenue.

Flames quickly consumed the entire building.

Many of the residents had to jump from upper floors to reach safety.

“There was a woman and a baby in a room,” a fire official told reporters. “A police officer was up there on a ladder with them, And all they could do was reach into the fire and grab the kid and pull the kid out. The woman, I think she fell coming down the ladder. And they grabbed her when she dropped off the ladder. And a couple of guys down here grabbed her. Reporter: Do you know if the child was injured or not? Firefighter: No, as far as we know, the baby’s all right, because the fireman grabbed hold of the baby and hung onto it. I think it was a fireman and a police officer wasn’t it. Reporter: That was on the third floor? Firefighter: Right. Third floor yeah.”

But a 19-year-old mother, her two-year-old daughter and two-year-old nephew were unable to escape, and they died in the fire.

Ten other people were injured.

WDBJ7 spoke with one of the survivors as she recovered in the hospital.

“I just think how lucky I am,” the woman told WDBJ7. “Sometimes I find myself thinking about a particular thing that I lost in the fire, or my car, because part of the building collapsed on it, but when I find all of these people coming in, people who I don’t even know come to see me and bring me gowns or just come and visit, and I have just spent most of my time just thinking about how good people are and how actually this has been a blessing to me.”

Investigators quickly determined the fire was a case of arson. And evidence would lead them to 18-year-old Robert Dean Dennis, a volunteer rescue squad member.

He was arrested in late March.

In January 1977, the Roanoke Times reported that Dennis pleaded guilty to arson and three counts of murder related to the Spanish Trace fire, and to arson charges associated with five other apartment fires that happened around the same time.