Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Police Chief Bobby Jones is the “whole department” in Fries, Va., a town in of about 690 people that lost two residents Monday in an explosion. Jones was on the scene immediately after a car rolled into two propane tanks.

FRIES -- Neither death nor destruction will dissolve this tiny Grayson County town.

Fries, population 690, is certainly as enduring as the New River that curls around its edge.

On Monday, an explosion at a laundromat on Main Street claimed the lives of a mother and daughter and injured three others -- all beloved members of the town's populace .

The tragedy has kindled the spirit of a community determined to stick together.

Debbie Littreal, a clerk at the D&R Food Mart just a mile outside town, has known for some time that she lives in a microcosm.

"I kept track of a $10 bill one time," she said Thursday as she operated the cash register at the convenience store. "It came back five times in two days.

"It's a small community," she added. "This is the worst tragedy in my memory."

A sign at the entrance to town touts Fries as the place "where the New River Trail begins."

Visitors who venture into Fries while hiking or bicycling the nearby rail trail seldom know how to pronounce the name of this place where tidy houses -- built by the Washington Mills Co. on sloping hillsides -- appear to be cradling the river.

Regular customers at the town's two restaurants, Big Daddy's or Shaylin's New River Trail Cafe, inform strangers it's "Freeze" in the winter and "Fries" in the summer.

Actually, it's "Freeze" year round.

Police Chief Bobby Jones, 52, knows the coziness of the town as well as anybody.

"I'm the whole department," the Fries native said.

Although he left town for a while to serve in the military, the community called Jones back. He has been the police chief now for 12 years.

Jones remembers when Washington Mills closed down its cotton mills in 1988, putting most of Fries' residents out of work. At one time, the cotton mill employed 1,700 people.

"It's been the grace of the good Lord that we've been able to hang on," Jones said.

"But this community, when a tragedy happens, it's amazing how they come together," he added.

Jones has seen the power of unity since Monday. It has helped calm the images that insist on infiltrating his head.

He has hardly slept this past week.

It was Jones who witnessed Monday's tragedy and was the first on the scene.

"You close your eyes and you just see it over and over," he said.

Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Monday's explosion ruined the basement laundromat in Fries. Bobby Jones said the accident was not caused by reckless driving, as some reports have implied. “It was an unfortunate accident, but it wasn't a reckless accident,” he said.

An unbelievable sight

It was just after 5 p.m. Monday when Jones pulled up to the Fries Volunteer Fire Department & Rescue Squad in his patrol car.

A member of the fire department as well as the police chief, Jones has been on some terrible calls. Three years ago, a young woman died as a result of a house fire to which he was called.

Jones remembers that the victim -- in her early 20s -- had crawled out of the flaming house and into her car.

What first caught Jones' attention Monday was the sound of metal crunching against metal.

Julia Miller, a 47-year-old Fries woman, had parked her car in front of the fire station and adjacent to the nearby New River Trail Cafe. Miller had called in an order to the restaurant and was picking it up. In the laundromat behind the cafe, four women were washing clothes.

Miller's car -- parked on an incline facing two large propane tanks that provided fuel for the cafe and the laundromat -- began to roll.

"She turned the car off," Jones said. "She said she put it in first gear. She mashed her brake and tried to start it, but she couldn't get it started. It started rolling forward, and I think she panicked."

Miller's car rolled no more than 20 feet into a 300-pound propane tank, pushing it into the second 225-pound tank. Miller and a passenger in the car had jumped out of the vehicle and were running when the tanks were hit.

The tanks were at least 10 feet away from the fire station and laundromat but were not protected by fencing or posts.

The first thing Jones remembers seeing was liquid propane spraying from the 225-pound tank. The valve had been knocked off.

"It looked like a white cloud gathering," Jones recalled. "When I started running toward it, the gas met me."

In less than a minute, Jones said the explosion happened, causing a giant fireball to envelope the laundromat and setting the front of the fire house ablaze. A pilot light in a running dryer was the ignition source.

The impact knocked the doors off washing machines in the laundromat and lifted the floor of the cafe overhead off its foundation. Built in the early 1900s, the building housing the laundromat and cafe was a solid structure with a base of reinforced concrete 12 inches thick.

"My main concern at the time," Jones said, "was the tank that hadn't exploded. If it had went off, it would have leveled everything down here."

Jones sprinted to the nearby Big Daddy's restaurant and told everyone to get out. Then, he took off for the cafe and evacuated everyone there to the far end of town. Miller had already screamed for cafe employees to call 911.

Clutching his hand-held radio, Jones headed for the victims in the laundromat. He spotted a woman who had somehow made it outside.

It was Mary Kay Leonard, Jones' friend since his school days.

"I didn't even recognize her when I got to her," he said. "I said, 'Sweetie, are you all right?' She said, 'Oh God, Bobby, help us.' I recognized her voice, saw her car and knew who she was.

"I said, 'Mary Kay, are you all right?' She said, 'Bobby, help mama. She's worse off than I am.' "

Leonard's 78-year-old mother, Iva Martin, was still in the laundromat, along with 21-year-old Jennifer Lineberry and 60-year-old Shelby McDonald. McDonald's son, Mark, was in a parked car nearby and had suffered burns to his hands and face.

Using his hand-held radio, Jones began trying to summon help. He was frantic. And frustrated.

"Our community lacks a lot here in the way of technology," he said Thursday. "I couldn't get out on my hand-held."

He raced back to his patrol car to call for assistance. He requested a helicopter to evacuate victims but was told that the weather wasn't right for a helicopter rescue.

"I don't think a helicopter would have made any difference because our ambulances were so quick," he said afterward.

Rescue vehicles from the Galax-Grayson Ambulance Service, Pipers Gap Rescue Squad and Baywood Rescue Squad were soon there. Fries' own rescue vehicles were unable to respond. They were behind the burning bays of the fire station just a few yards from the victims.

Elden Burris, a lieutenant with the Galax-Grayson response unit, was one of the first responders. He had to transport Martin, the most severely injured, to the hospital.

"It wasn't pretty," he said.

Burris was overwhelmed by the tragedy. He owns the laundromat, the only place in town for folks to pay to do their laundry.

"I don't really know what to say. It hurts so bad that we lost the people," he said. "They were like family. Everybody's family here."

Sweet ladies

Iva Martin

Martin -- Miss Iva to townspeople -- was taken to Galax's Twin County Regional Hospital with burns over her entire body. She and her daughter, who was also severely burned, were later transported to North Carolina's Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center.

Martin died about 1:20 a.m. Tuesday. Mary Kay Leonard, a 52-year-old wife, mother and nurse at the Galax hospital, died 18 hours later.

Jennifer Lineberry and Shelby McDonald were also taken to the North Carolina center and are expected to recover from their injuries. Mark McDonald was treated and released from Twin County Regional Hospital on Monday.

Jones -- like many of his neighbors -- suffered a broken heart.

Leonard, his friend, had asked him to take care of her mother.

Mary Kay Leonard

"That's the kind of person she was. She was always looking after her mama," he said, noting that his ties with Martin go back a long way, too. She was his lunch lady when he was a schoolboy.

The family members of the two women, Jones added, "are taking it pretty rough, as you can imagine."

"They are one of the most close-knit families I've ever seen," he said, noting that both women were considered "sweethearts" of the community.

"They were wonderful, wonderful ladies," said Rhea Bourne, owner of the building where the explosion occurred. "Sweet smiles all the time."

Bourne, who rents out laundromat space and other space in the building, operates Shaylin's New River Trail Cafe herself. She opened the restaurant -- named for her pet dog and the nearby tourist attraction -- three years ago. It has become a favorite gathering place in town and one of the stops on the Crooked Road old-time music trail. Thursdays and Saturdays bring folks in for homemade desserts and live music.

The restaurant is now closed until it can be made structurally sound for re-opening. The force of the blast downstairs in the laundromat left a crack from one end of the restaurant floor to the other. Bourne doesn't yet have an estimate on damage to the building.

"You can't estimate damage when you've got people killed and people burned," she said. "There is no dollar figure."

But the restaurant is important, too, Borne noted.

"We've got employees who are out of work here at Christmas," she said. "We're going to try to re-open as soon as possible.

"We've got to open a restaurant," she added, her jaw set in a determined line. "Fries has got to have a restaurant."

The propane tanks, Bourne said, were there when she bought the building five years ago. She never imagined such an accident could happen.

"The gas stove was in the restaurant when I went there," she said, eyeing the empty space where the tanks used to be.

"But it'll be electric now."

Asking questions

Randy Lineberry, 51, is serving his third term as Fries' fire chief.

He admits that the propane tanks in front of the fire station had caused him some concern. He worried that there were no impact barriers protecting them.

"I guess we ought to have said something and didn't," he said Thursday as members of the fire department scrubbed the bay doors that had been scorched in the blast.

Jones and Lineberry said the burden of inspecting the propane tanks and following safety guidelines would fall to the supplier, Independence Oil & LP Gas. Mark Vannoy, one of the company's owners, could not be reached for comment.

The company faxed a statement to The Roanoke Times, saying, "We join with the community in expressing our sympathy to those who were injured as the result of this occurrence and to the family of those who lost their lives as the result of this explosion. We will continue to support them with our thoughts and prayers."

"I'm afraid it's going to be a mess over the tanks," said Burris, the laundromat owner who rented the space from Bourne. He said the tanks were installed by the building's previous owner.

"I don't really know what to say," he added. "Our heart goes out to everyone. It was just one of those things that was a freak accident."

Blame is not at the top of the agenda in the community now. Funeral services for Martin and Leonard will be held today at 1 p.m. in the Fries International Pentecostal Holiness Church. Jones expects the whole town will turn out.

Jones and others are concerned about Julia Miller, the woman whose car rolled into the tanks. Miller, who was treated for shock at Twin County Regional Hospital on Monday, is still extremely upset, Jones said. And television reports implying that the accident was caused by reckless driving, he added, left him feeling angry.

"That just burnt me up," he said. "It was an unfortunate accident, but it wasn't a reckless accident."

As best he can, Jones is trying to comfort the people in his town. All week he has been visiting grieving families, writing reports, helping plan benefits and bereavements for the victims and lending his shoulder to those who need it.

Earlier this week, his 9-year-old son needed that shoulder.

"Daddy, what if our house blows up?" Jones said his son asked.

After allaying his son's fears, Jones asked a question of his own.

"Where are Miss Martin and Mary Kay going to be this Christmas?"

"In heaven with Jesus," was the youngster's reply.

"Then," Jones recalled, "he perked up and said, 'They'll have a better Christmas than us.' "