Three Killed in Fraternity House Blaze

BLOOMSBURG, Pa. — A fire in an off-campus fraternity house near Bloomsburg University killed three people early Sunday, while others jumped to safety in their underwear from a second-story window.

Five male fraternity members and a visiting alumnus were sleeping in the Tau Kappa Epsilon house when the fire broke out about 6 a.m. Three managed to get out safely, university spokesman Jim Hollister said.

Hollister said it was too soon to tell whether the bodies were those of the missing students. He said the victims would be identified through dental records.

“It didn’t set in with me until I went down to the scene,” said Jason Starling, a member of the university’s Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. “You had people out there camping out. You had the [surviving] brothers out there.”

The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. The two-story wooden house is in a hilly neighborhood about two blocks from campus.

Red-eyed students in sweatshirts huddled in small groups and talked quietly as fire officials and construction equipment sifted through still-smoking ruins. A neighboring white three-story home was scorched, and police said it sustained severe damage inside.

Bloomsburg University President Jessica Kozloff said the building was owned by the fraternity and had been maintained well. She said the university had revised its procedures to offer education and training for off-campus students after a fraternity house fire in 1994 killed five students.

“These are young adults who do make decisions on their own about their lifestyle and where they’re going to live,” Kozloff said. “We can’t protect them from everything.”

City officials cleared the house for occupancy after noting a dozen code violations in October, including a battery missing from a smoke detector, five electrical heaters being run on an inadequate electrical system, a missing doorknob and an empty fire extinguisher, said code officer Dean Van Blohn. He said the violations had been corrected by late January.

“I can assure you that if we discover that this occurred because of any negligence . . . we will certainly take measures to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Kozloff said.

Two students escaped by jumping from a second-story window.

Classes have been canceled for two hours today, when Kozloff will address the students.

Tau Kappa Epsilon, dormant on the Bloomsburg campus for some years, was restarted in 1997 with 18 members. It was in good standing with the university and the fraternity’s national headquarters, Hollister said.

A smoldering sofa was blamed for the fraternity house fire that killed five Bloomsburg students on Oct. 21, 1994. Batteries had been taken out of smoke detectors in the Beta Sigma Delta house, a common practice during smoky parties.

In January, a fire in a dormitory at Seton Hall University in New Jersey killed three students and critically injured six others.

Bloomsburg, founded in 1839, is a state university about 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia with an enrollment of about 7,500.