 Debris from a fire on Oak Street sits in the front yard. Photo by Holt Menzies |
by STEPHANIE STRAUBEL
Intern News Reporter
Tuesday morning brought a rude awakening for the residents of Oak Street.
The onset of early snow flurries was accompanied by a less welcome phenomenon, as the home at 231 Oak St. was engulfed in flames.
The fire began around 4:30 a.m. as the house’s four residents were awakened by smoke detectors.
“It was pretty shocking when it happened,” sophomore biology major S. Davis Alford said. “It took me back to my kindergarten days of stop, drop and roll.”
The cause of the fire is unknown, but Alford thinks it started with a cigarette smoldering in a trash can.
“I mean, it was an accident,” he said. “The wind just picked it up from there.”
Boone
Fire Marshal Ronnie Marsh confirmed the fire started outside on a
“small porch area,” and moved to the attic, but the origin of the blaze
is still under investigation.
“It
started right near our gas tank,” senior finance and banking major
Blake A. Glover said. “So things could have been a lot worse.”
 Boone Fire Marshal Ronnie Marsh estimates $50,000 in damages to the house. Photo by Holt Menzies
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All four
residents are members of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, but do not
consider the incident will be detrimental to the fraternity’s meetings,
which were commonly held at the now charred house.
Marsh estimates $50,000 in damage to the house’s structure and $10,000 to its contents.
Fires
like this occur two to three times a semester, and the winter months
typically augment this number as students employ alternate heating
sources including log fires and space heaters, Marsh said.
Marsh
encourages students to practice fire-preventing behaviors. All students
should make sure their smoke detectors are working, and contact their
landlords or the Boone Fire Department if they fail to initiate a
response.
Students
using space heaters should always keep them at least three feet away
from any other objects to reduce the risk of spontaneous flame.
Students should also make sure to know the exact location and address of their homes, Marsh said.
He said,
“People tend to know where their home is out in the county, but if
you’re going to be calling from a cell phone you need to be able to
tell [emergency responders] exactly where you are.”
The age
of a home should always considered when evaluating fire safety.
Apartments are equipped with electric smoke detectors but many older
homes use battery-operated ones that need to be monitored, Marsh said.
 Insulation and rubble litter the bathroom inside the remnants of the building. Photo by Holt Menzies |
“That
house was pretty old, so maybe this is a bit of a Godsend,” Alford
said. “We’re just glad the smoke detectors were working, and we took
all the necessary precautions to get ourselves out.”
The residents are currently staying in hotels and with friends as they wait for their house to be repaired.
“I mean,
it’s a great place to hang out, and we’d like to get it fixed up by
next semester,” Glover said. “We’d love to hang out there again.”
“This is just a little setback, but we’ll get through it,” sophomore undecided major W. Zachary Simpson said.
The
Watauga County Fire Marshal and Emergency Management Office is going to
join forces with the Watauga Amateur Radio club to offer a radio class
to encourage fire safety in November.
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