The Triangle

Issue date: 5/19/06 Section: News

Media Credit: Mat Boyle

"Escaping your house when it is on fire is so scary," said Miya Benintende, a junior majoring in photography. "There is no other way to describe it unless you have experienced it before."

Sixteen students were displaced from their homes as a result of a fire that took place after 3 a.m. at 38th Street and Lancaster Avenue May 11.

The fire broke out at a vacant building on 3834 Lancaster Avenue and spilled into the adjacent house, where the students resided.

Stacey Rose, a pre-junior majoring in business administration, said that she was asleep on the first floor of her home at 3836 Lancaster Avenue when the fire broke out.

"My roommate, Emma Stern, actually was the one who woke up," Rose said. "She said that she heard the crackling from the fire because she was on the second floor."

Stern woke up when she heard the fire crackling from a second floor window. She roused everybody else in the house and called the fire department. The fire alarms began going off at the same time.

Stern, a junior majoring in photography, said that she was asleep in bed around 3 a.m. when the fire broke out.

"All of my roommates were home at the time and everybody was asleep," Stern said. "I panicked, I called 911 and woke everyone up and the fire alarms went off. We got out of the house. I didn't have time to act upset because we were trying to get out of the house."

Stern said that the residents escaped by exiting out the front door of the house, since the fire had broken out in the backyard of the adjacent house. She also said that she lost everything except her clothes. Stern is soon going to return to school and reclaim all of the things she lost in the incident - most importantly, a computer.

Benintende was on the ground floor bedroom of the house when she found out about the fire. She heard a crackling noise coming from the backyard and saw Stern running around the building, yelling for everyone to evacuate.

Jessica Bozarth, a pre-junior majoring in international area studies, said that she had been sleeping on the third floor of the house when the fire occurred. She also said that she is not sure about how the fire started, but knows that the property next to her house was abandoned and in disrepair when the incident occurred.

Continued...

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