A 21-acre brush fire off of Gid Brown Hollow Road crept within 20 feet of a neighboring house last Friday, said Washington Fire Chief Ann Spieker. No one at the residence was home at the time, she said.

Five of the county's six fire departments, as well as the Virginia Department of Forestry, responded to the afternoon fire, which burned for hours and sent a large plume of smoke into the sky that could be seen miles away.

The fire squads parked their vehicles on nearby Pullens Bluff Road and cleared brush around the fire with a bulldozer and rakes to try to contain it.

"It was not a fire that you put out with your trucks," Spieker said. "You had to actually walk and rake a line to stop this fire."

Spieker said that rocky terrain and thick vegetation complicated efforts.

She said that the squads arrived to find that the fire had melted a seal on a 500-gallon propane tank, which was spitting flames. The crews turned off the gas and cooled down the tank to keep it from exploding, Spieker said.

Spieker said the cause of the fire has not been determined.

"It could've been as simple as a hiker going and smoking and dropping ash," she said. "We don't know."

The forestry department is looking into the fire, but Spieker doubts the investigation will yield a cause.

"I think if we would've been able to determine a definite cause, we would've known by now," she said.