The house is on fire . . .
Brent Fellows | 11/19/2003 Is your chapter serious about fire safety. If not, this is why you should be.Imagine going to bed after studying all night for a test only to be awakened in the middle of the night to loud smoke detectors and smoke engulfing your room. This was a reality for me and my fellow Epsilon Theta brothers at Western Kentucky University on November 17, 1998, as an accidental fire completely destroyed our 100-year-old three-story chapter house.
I remember that night from time to time as if it happened yesterday. I had stayed up all night studying for a test and decided I was ready to go to bed. At 2:15 a.m., to my surprise one of my brothers kicked in my door yelling at us to get outside because the house was on fire. My heart was beating rapidly as I threw on some clothes. At that point, I remember turning towards the door and for some reason I did not raise my hand to grab my entrusted old KA hat that was dangling on a hook above me. I quickly ran forward following my roommate out the door and ran as hard as I could out of the house. As I was running out of the house I could not see or breath for at least a minute until I made it down the stairs and into our back lot. I was anxiously searching for the way off the back deck and felt like coughing up a lung. I saw several of my brothers coughing and another lying on the ground trying to get a breath of air.
I frantically looked around and counted to make sure everyone was present. For some reason we came up short and wondered where the missing brother was. At this point the fire had swarmed the house and the heat was so hot it had forced us farther back. We finally got word that the missing brother was staying at a friend’s house and our fear of losing a brother diminished.
Standing speechless in the street, we tearfully watched fire fighters battle the blaze for hours. We lost everything we owned in the house. We had lost our charter, awards, composites, our personal stuff: clothes, textbooks, notes, etc. At that moment, for some reason, none of that stuff really mattered. We stood there for hours watching the fire slowly burn out and thinking about how lucky we were that everyone made it out alive.
I have been asked on a number of occasions what I missed most from the fire.
I always responded by saying that I wished I would have raised my hand straight up as I was running out of my room and grabbed that old KA hat. I had spent the previous summer fixing and molding that hat until it was perfect. I guess the main reason is that hat symbolized something that means a lot to me, brotherhood.
In truth, I really didn’t care about all the materialistic things I lost that night. The only thing that mattered was that we were all okay. Every brother made it out because the instinct of brotherhood took over. Brothers thought of each other first in that situation. Some brothers had climbed up to the
second floor to make sure everyone had made it out only having to jump from the window because the fire became too hot. A few others had run up to the third floor and dragged some brothers out as well. If it had not been for brothers coming to each others aid we might have suffered a true tragedy.
As I sat down to write this article, I truly see how lucky our chapter was with the fire. I see how easy it would have been to have run through a checklist to see if our house was up to date on all fire codes, and to make sure that we were not overloading our outlets.
Unfortunately the cause of the fire was never determined. The investigators came to a conclusion that it was an electrical fire or arson. Neither were proven. You never think something is going to happen. We never ever thought that our house that we took pride in could burn down. Take a look at this information from the winter 2003 issue of The Shield and discuss fire safety with your chapter. It’s not a fun experience to lose your home, not to mention the fear that one of your brothers might be trapped inside. |
