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At least nine Boston College students were displaced following a fire in their apartment at 11 Strathmore Road early Friday morning. Firefighters believe that the fire, deemed accidental, stemmed from a smoldering charcoal grill located on a rooftop deck. No serious injuries were reported, and no criminal charges will be filed against residents or their visitors.
Nate Mellor, A&S '11, was asleep when he said he heard a faint call from someone yelling fire. "I looked out and saw fire reflected in the windows of the house across the street," he said.
Dan Esposito, A&S '10, who lived with Mellor on the building's third floor, said that his roommate awakened him at around 4 a.m. "He noticed there was fire in our bathroom," Esposito said. "The fire had fallen through the roof, and the roof had collapsed a little bit."
Mellor tried to put it out, but the fire continued to come in through the roof. "I told him to give up trying to put it out," Esposito said. "At that point, I ran up to the roof [deck] and the whole thing was engulfed in flames." The fire detectors did not go off until the roof had collapsed, he said.
Ben Weil, A&S '10, who had been up until 3 a.m. working on a project with a friend, said Esposito's calls woke him up. "The feeling I had to get out was instantaneous," he said. About three feet in front of his door were flames about six feet high, he said.
Esposito said he continued to wake up other roommates, Rob Amato and Howie Hipolito, both CSOM '10, before the kitchen ceiling collapsed, and that within five minutes, everyone had evacuated. The fire department arrived shortly after. "The landlord was sprinting around in his underwear, making sure no one was in the building," Esposito said of his heroics.
The apartment sustained several hundred thousand dollars in damages, especially water damage from the fire department's efforts to extinguish the flames, with some sources estimating costs as much as $400,000. While residents have been able to move back into the first-floor apartment, BC students living on the second and third floors have been accommodated by the University's Office of Residential Life.
"Members of University staff from student affairs, ResLife, and Boston College Police Department responded as they always do to meet the needs of the students," said University Spokesman Jack Dunn. "They were there to provide housing and food immediately after the fire, offer counseling, find shoes and clothes for the students affected, and to provide Eagle Bucks cards as well."
Esposito said the support from the University, especially ResLife, has been outstanding. "The school has been great to us. George Arey [associate director of ResLife] was one of the first people on the scene, and he's been taking really good care of us." Currently many of the displaced students have been moved to Edmond's while they look for a new apartment.
The group can stay together in the Edmond's suite until Friday, when that room is due to be occupied. After that, on-campus options have them splitting up. Weil said that the whole experience has really brought the group together and that they wanted to continue living together. "Ideally we would like to get back to Strathmore," Weil said. "We would like to find temporary housing off campus to live while the building is repaired."
Dunn stressed that the Brookline police and fire departments had determined that the fire was an accident after interviewing residents as required by law. "We are extremely fortunate that all BC students are safe. Their safety and well-being is our highest priority, and we are all fortunate that this accident ended without injury."
"Thankfully, everybody made it out without a scratch," Esposito said. "From what we've heard, that's incredibly lucky. We had a call from a firefighter telling us that it was more likely than not that someone would have been hurt."
Esposito said that there were five residents in the third-floor apartment, which has five bedrooms, and that they had other BC students staying with them that night. While other BC students live in the first- and second-floor units, the top floor was the only apartment with exclusively BC students living in it.
While the cause has been linked to a charcoal grill left unattended, no responsibility has been placed on any one person. Students who were using the grill told police and firefighters that they had doused the smoldering coals with water, but it is likely that there were embers still ignited that may have fallen through the bottom of the grill. "There is supposed to be a sandbox to catch things like that, but apparently it didn't take care of it," Mellor said.
Nothing in the Boston Fire Prevention Code specifically addresses the use of a grill on a rooftop deck. But given recent fire incidents in the past few years, especially the deaths of two Boston University students whose off-campus apartment caught fire in 2007, fire safety and prevention has been on the minds of administrators and firefighters alike.
The roommates were allowed to return to the building the next day when it was deemed safe, and they put into storage what they could salvage.
Esposito said one of the tougher things he and his roommates will now face is their loss of possessions. "How we will move on after this - that's a question we're all asking ourselves," he said. "Obviously, a lot of our books, laptops, and notebooks were destroyed. We all do acknowledge that the sooner we can get back to class the better in terms of staying on top of work."
"There was a lot of soot and debris on the floor, but it mostly missed my stuff," Weil said.
Mellor, whose room sustained substantial damage, said he had insurance that would probably cover some of the loss. "Obviously, I'd much prefer to have the place back," he said.
University officials from multiple offices will continue to provide support and assistance for as long as those affected need it.
Alexi Chi contributed to this report.
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