Fire investigators will return Wednesday morning to the scene of a Tuesday evening house fire that took the life of a 62-year-old Aloha woman. Joanne Mary Jones (DOB: 10/13/37) died Tuesday evening when fire swept through the second floor of the home she shared with her husband, Richard Francis Jones (DOB: 9/26/30).

Firefighters were dispatched to the home, located at 5660 SW 185^th Avenue, after passersby reported the fire to the Washington County 9-1-1 Center. Dispatched at 8:47 p.m., firefighters arrived to find the home’s second floor fully involved in fire. The area in which the fire occurred is in the Tualatin Valley district, but receives automatic response from both TVF&R and the Hillsboro Fire Department. Five engines and a ladder truck from TVF&R and an engine and truck from HFD responded to the fire with 30 firefighters.

Firefighters fought their way up and into the second floor, hindered by falling ceilings, and knocked the fire down within 15 minutes of arrival. The victim was found on a bed in a bedroom at the front of the second floor.

Richard Jones told investigators that he was sleeping downstairs when people banging on the home’s front door and yelling that the house was on fire alerted him. He attempted to go up the stairs to the second floor, where he had last seen his wife, but was driven back by heat and smoke. While it’s believed that the actions of those passersby or neighbors may have saved the life of Mr. Jones, they were not identified in the confusion of the fire.

The home had a functioning smoke detector on the first floor, which did not activate because smoke from the upstairs fire did not drop to the first floor. Mr. Jones told investigators that he had placed a smoke detector on the home’s second floor, but did not know if it operated at the time of the fire.

The fire extensively damaged, but was confined to, the second story of the house. A dollar estimate of loss has not yet been prepared.

Investigators were on-scene until nearly midnight Tuesday, and plan to return to the home in daylight Wednesday to complete their investigation. At this time, the fire appears to have been accidental. The Washington County Medical Examiner will conduct tests to determine the cause of death.

Assistance at the scene was provided by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and the county’s Department of Land Use and Transportation, who blocked streets around the fire scene for approximately three hours Tuesday night.

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