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Sandy Hill, 43, died after firefighters missed her smoke-filled second-floor bedroom for at least 20 minutes during a Feb. 5, 2010, house fire in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, according to a Free Lance-Star investigation that obtained 911 recordings.

Hill's housemate, Christie Brown, called 911 at 12:54 a.m. after seeing smoke and flames in a hallway near the dining room of the four-bedroom house on Spotswood Furnace Road. Brown ran outside without her boots, went back in for them, screamed for her teenage daughter to break a bedroom window, then dropped her phone as she left again, disconnecting the call.

Hill called 911 separately around the same time. "I think the house is on fire," she told dispatcher Domonique Curry, then said she could not breathe. Curry told her to break a window, but Hill said she could not budge it.

Volunteer firefighters from Chancellor Volunteer Fire and Rescue arrived within minutes and rescued Brown's 17-year-old daughter, Sarah, through a first-floor bedroom window. A crew searching upstairs repeatedly reported Hill's room clear.

Fire officials later said Hill's bedroom could be reached only through a connecting craft room, and the door between them had no doorknob, just a hole where one should have been. Searchers passed it three times before finding Hill unconscious on the floor at 1:21 a.m. She was pronounced dead at Mary Washington Hospital. Fire Marshal Brian Seay said the blaze started when an electric coil heater ignited a hallway closet.

Spotsylvania County ordered an internal review after the Free Lance-Star began asking why crews took so long to reach Hill despite knowing she was upstairs. Retired Fairfax County fire official Carl Maurice, who reviewed the recordings, said no ladder was placed at Hill's windows and rescuers never used thermal imaging cameras that were available on scene. "In my professional opinion, Sandy Hill should still be alive today," he said.

The Virginia Department of Fire Programs recommended an organized training program in a November 2010 report on the response, and Spotsylvania County adopted new minimum training standards, nearly 400 hours for a basic firefighter, in the wake of Hill's death.