A fire broke out early Sunday morning at a beach house on Ocean Isle Beach in southern North Carolina, killing six University of South Carolina students and one Clemson University student, while there were six survivors also from USC, authorities said.
Perched on stilts, the home sits about two blocks from the beach on one of a series of peninsulas, each by canals. The home was being used by the owner’s daughter and a group of her friends for a weekend getaway, Ocean Isle Mayor Debbie Smith told MSNBC.
Mayor Smith also said investigators told her the fire was likely accidental and started on a deck facing a canal on the west side of the house.
Ocean Isle Beach firefighters were at the scene within four minutes of getting the call, but the house was fully engulfed in flames when they arrived. Many students were forced to jump into the canal below.
More than 30 UNC students who belong to the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity rented two houses for their pledge weekend on the same street as the house that burned. The Chapel Hill group met the South Carolina students, who school officials said were members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
The new friends spent the weekend grilling and watching football together, joking about the rivalry between the two Carolina schools.
Classes on USC went on this week as scheduled, but a garnet and black banner with the school’s mascot, a Gamecock, flew at half-staff alongside an American flag outside a fraternity house. Two black ribbons were wrapped around the columns of another house.
“These are young people in the prime of their life. They had so much to look forward to, and it is just profoundly tragic,” University of South Carolina President Dr. Andrew Soresen said Sunday to a WRAL reporter.
Campus Firewatch named the 2006-2007 academic year to be the most fatal one on record. There were 10 campus-related fire deaths in this period and 18 occurring in off-campus occupancies (the other two were in fraternities), according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Common factors in a number of these fires include:
1. Lack of automatic fire sprinkler system 2. Missing or disabled smoke alarms 3. Careless disposal of smoking materials 4. Impaired judgment from alcohol consumption
Lieutenant Christopher Tracy, Fairfield Fire Department’s Public Information Officer, said that the best plan that the fire department has been able to come up with is the beginning of the year information session that is required for all off-campus students.
“The best that students can do is to educate themselves in fire safety and hope that that education sticks on a Saturday night,” said Lieutenant Tracy.
Doug Madonia 08′, a Fairfield beach resident and a firefighter, thinks that one information session is not enough to educate students.
“We are not educated enough when it comes to home safety. I personally think it’s the responsibly of the landlord,” he said.
There are a number of steps that Campus Firewatch recommends students take as precautionary measures ( Check out Campus Firewatch here):
1. Live in housing equipped with an automatic fire sprinkler system. 2. Ensure that your housing has interconnected smoke alarms on all levels and that they are working at all times. 3. Take each alarm activation seriously and evacuate. If an alarm is being activated needlessly by cooking or by a shower, relocate the alarm, do not disable it. 4. Always know two ways out of the building you are in, whether it is your house, apartment, residence hall, movie theater or nightclub. 5. A number of fires have started because cigarettes have been carelessly discarded. Use ashtrays and dispose of the cigarette butts properly. 6. After a party, check the seat cushions on couches and chairs for cigarettes that may lie smoldering, waiting to start a fire in the middle of the night. 7. Do not overload extension cords which may cause them to overheat. 8. Make sure you have a fire extinguisher and, more importantly, know how to use it before the fire breaks out.
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