Although early reports suggested that there could have been two fatalities in this morning’s blaze at 3200 Long Acre Road in Fluvanna County, Fluvanna fire officials now say the residents were not home at the time of the fire.

“They were on their way to North Carolina,” says Fluvanna Volunteer Fire Chief Mike Brent, who was still on the scene today at 10am as smoke continued to rise from the structure’s charred remains, and investigators from Virginia State Police and Fluvanna County Sheriff’s Department picked through the detritus. Authorities initially announced plans to use cadaver sniffing dogs to search for victims, but a public plea for information about the whereabouts of the residents on this morning’s local television news resulted in a phone call from a friend who gave firefighters the good news.

Now, investigators are “trying to eliminate any possibility that it was intentionally set,” Brent says. The cause remains a mystery, but what is known is that by the time a neighbor called 911 at 1:45am today, says Brent, the two-story wood-sided house was already fully engulfed in flames. And when firefighters from three local fire houses responded, the second story had already collapsed. The couple’s three cats, reportedly inside last night, may have perished in the fire, says Brent, although their bodies had not been found as of this morning.

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