'Profoundly tragic'
• Six victims identified by family members in fire that kills seven students
• Officials: Fire may have started near deck
By Tim Flach and Ishmael Tate - The State
TIM DOMINICK/TDOMINICK@THESTATE
USC junior Samantha Shaw of Greenville reads about Sunday morning's deadly Ocean Isle, N.C., beach house fire in the Daily Gamecock campus newspaper as she stands in line to get Florida football tickets. Shaw grew up in church with one of the victims and a survivor who jumped from the house into nearby water. "It doesn't seem real. I'm still in shock," she said. Six USC students and one Clemson student were killed in the fire. The USC students were members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
Fire officials say a North Carolina home where seven South Carolina college students died in a fire Sunday had fire alarms.
Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., Fire Chief Robert Yoho said the house had the required smoke alarms in bedrooms and a nearby hallway. It lacked a sprinkler system, which was not required.
Asked why the house burned so rapidly, Yoho replied, "oxygen." He said the wood construction and strong winds contributed to the spread. Since the house was elevated, that allowed wind to whip underneath.
Authorities believe the deadly blaze may have started near a deck in the back of the two story house on Scotland Street, said Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith.
The home erupted into a storm of fire and smoke. Six of the seven students killed attended USC and the other Clemson. Six other USC students in the house survived.
A girl who escaped the fire was back in the hospital Monday night with complications from smoke inhalation.
Chip Auman, the beach house's owner, whose daughter Katherine, 18, was injured in the fire, said Monday that his family was "numb, shocked and confused."
"There are no words to describe what we've been going through," said a distraught Auman, who declined to take questions Monday night while speaking to a reporter at a hospital in Hartsville. "We are living a nightmare."
Auman said daughter Katherine's condition was stable, but guarded.
Investigators are searching for the cause of the fire, which they believe to be accidental.
Smith said officials ruled out a chimenea - a free-standing outdoor fireplace - below a second-floor deck might be the cause of the fire.
Names of the victims had not been announced by authorities. But relatives and friends identified six family members who died:
The father of Allison Walden, 19, of Chagrin Falls, Ohio, confirmed his family is planning a memorial service for his daughter.Terry Walden told The State he sent his daughter’s dental records for identification purposes.
Walden said after speaking with his daughter’s roommate, Fallon Sposato, he believes his child never woke after going to sleep early Sunday. Sposato was at the house with Walden, but escaped the blaze, he said.
Sophomore Travis Cale, 20, of Greenville was among the students who perished, his brother Burns told The State.Cale, an upbeat and quick-witted young man, graduated from J.L. Mann High School in 2006 and grew up a Gamecock fan, friends and relatives said.
Lauren Mahon of Simpsonville is another victim, according to a memorial page set up by her friends on Facebook.A freshman, Mahon listed law and real estate as her academic concentrations on her Facebook profile page.
Mahon is also listed as a 2007 pledge for the USC chapter of Delta Delta Delta on the sorority’s Web site.
Mahon’s friend, Megan Maness, set up the page today in memory of Mahon.
Friends of Cassidy Pendley told the Charleston Post and Courier that the Fort Dorcester High School graduate was among the victims. Memorial pages for her are posted online. Anna Lee Rhea said her older brother, William, was among the dead - a devastating blow to their older brother, Andrew, who made it out of the house alive."Everybody loved him. Everybody really misses him," she said in a brief telephone interview with the Associated Press. "You couldn't help but love him."
Stephen Anderson, 23, told the Wilmington (N.C.) Star his younger brother Justin, a USC sophomore who grew up in Greenville, was among those who died.The students were spending the weekend at the beach, a typical pastime for USC students when the football team is on the road.
"The deaths of these students are an incredible loss, made all the more tragic by the fact that they died at such a young age,” Gov. Mark Sanford said today. “I'd ask that every South Carolinian keep them in their thoughts and prayers as well and to pray for the speedy recovery of those injured in the fire."
Several of the students involved were members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Delta Delta Delta sorority, but the gathering was not an official event of either Greek organization, said Dennis Pruitt, vice president for student affairs.
Clemson president James Barker also expressed sympathy. “In our state, all of us are connected and we feel their loss as they feel our loss.” he said. Fire investigators should be able to locate an area of origin, but may have trouble finding a specific cause, said Dr. Rolin Barrett, a consulting engineer with Raleigh-based Barrett Engineering who has been involved in almost 1,000 fire investigations.
"So many things are consumed in fire that you can't tell what they were like beforehand," he said. "If a cigarette did it, then the cigarette was probably consumed."
As authorities removed the bodies from the charred home, they found most of the victims in the home's five bedrooms.
Investigators quizzed dozens of college students who filled several homes near the site of the disaster. Rebecca Wood, the president of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity at the University of North Carolina, said police wanted to know if the college students were using a grill or a chimenea. She said she didn't see anyone using the chimenea, and Smith said investigators had concluded the fire didn't start there. Wood said all the grilling was done far away from the house.
"The smoke was going straight in the air," Wood said. "They were doing it in the correct place."
On the USC campus, grief counselors and church pastors were dispatched to the SAE and Tri-Delt houses in the university’s Greek village. Counselors, advisers and friends spun a tight web of protection around the two houses as campus police officers sat outside.
Classes were held today, but Pruitt said students will have access to counselors and residence hall advisers. Clergy are being brought in to help.
USC invited students and others to place flowers, notes, cards and other memorials on the Gamecock painted on Greene Street in front of Russell House, its student center.
Lauren Hodge of Sumter, president of the campus chapter of Delta Delta Delta, expressed thanks for what she said was a nationwide outpouring of support during “this extremely difficult time.”
Jay Laura of Greenville, president of the campus chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, said USC “will get through this terrible tragedy” because of support and fellowship among students and campus officials.
Parents who want advice on how to deal with the situation can call campus counselors at (803) 777-5223.
Ocean Isle Beach is at the far southern end of North Carolina’s Atlantic Coast, about 30 miles north of Myrtle Beach. Only about 500 people live there year-round, but the town is home to several thousand rental and vacation homes and condominiums.
The State staff members and the Associated Press contributed to this story
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