By Hugh Fisher
hfisher@salisburypost.com
Fire engulfed a mobile home on Tammy Road outside Salisbury just after 6:30 Monday night.
The trailer was gutted by flames, but no one was injured.
Neighbors said the home had been unoccupied for several weeks.
The Rowan County 911 dispatcher recorded the call at 6:36 p.m.
Shortly thereafter, firefighters on the scene radioed for law enforcement to respond because of suspicion there might be narcotics inside the home, according to emergency radio transmissions.
A Rowan County sheriff’s deputy on the scene said there was a history of calls regarding the residence but declined to elaborate. He declined to identify himself and referred further questions to the Sheriff’s Office public affairs officer.
Bernice R. Stanley of Mocksville owns the property. Reached via phone, Stanley said she had been notified of the fire by law enforcement officers and believed the mobile home to be a total loss.
She did not know the cause of the fire. “They were still investigating,” Stanley said.
Stanley said neighbors told her they had seen no suspicious activity this evening.
She had been in the process of moving furniture to the trailer, which has been a rental property.
The most recent tenants had been living there “a pretty good while,” Stanley said, but added she had evicted them recently due to nonpayment of rent.
She said the windows of the trailer had been broken out two days before the fire by an unknown vandal.
“I was moving and I didn’t stop moving because I wanted to get everything down there and then put the windows in and rent it,” Stanley said.
Stanley said she was not aware of prior suspicious activity at the home. She called the Sheriff’s Office after the windows were knocked out. It was not clear whether that was the call referred to by the deputy at the scene.
Troy Valley spotted the fire as he visited a home on nearby Shue Road. He saw smoke rising from down the street and went to investigate.
Valley found the interior of the mobile home in flames.
“There were no lights on, but there was fire in every window,” he said.
Lt. Scott Undercoffler of the Locke Township Fire Department lives next door to the home. Valley knocked at the Undercofflers’ door to alert the family, fearing the fire might spread.
“It went up like a torch,” Valley said.
Undercoffler confirmed no one was in the residence when the fire broke out. He wouldn’t comment on reports of suspicious activity at the home.
Fire investigators were on the scene and were looking into the cause of the blaze.
Emergency personnel shut down part of Shue Road while they fought the fire, according to radio transmissions.
Firefighters from the Locke Township, Landis, South Salisbury, Bostian Heights and China Grove fire departments responded to the call, along with the Rowan County Rescue Squad and Rowan County Sheriff’s Office.