Mayor: Blaze that killed 7 college students at N.C. started on deck

A fire at a vacation house where college students went to take advantage of the last good beach weather may have started on a deck, an official said Monday, as two campuses waited to find out the names of the seven dead. The home erupted into a storm of fire and smoke Sunday morning in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C. Six of the seven students killed attended the University of South Carolina; the other attended Clemson University. Six other South Carolina students in the house survived.\nOcean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith said investigators told her the fire was likely accidental and started either on or near a deck facing a canal on the west side of the house. \nThat side of the building appeared to have suffered the most damage. Earlier Monday, Smith had said the fire started on the deck.\n“They may not be able to determine what started it,” Smith said.\nThough students heard through word of mouth which students survived, the names of the victims had not been announced. Anna Lee Rhea said her older brother, William, was among the dead – a devastating blow to their older brother, Andrew, who made it out of the house alive.\n“Everybody loved him. Everybody really misses him,” she said in a brief telephone interview from the family’s home in Florence, S.C. “You couldn’t help but love him.”\nClasses went on as scheduled at the University of South Carolina Monday, where a garnet and black banner with the school’s mascot, a Gamecock, flew at half-staff outside a fraternity house. Black ribbons were wrapped around the columns of another house. The campus scheduled a candlelight ceremony for Monday evening.\nThe students had gathered at the home for the weekend to enjoy the fleeting beach weather. All that was left of the structure Monday was a charred shell, and four burned-out cars sat in the driveway, cordoned off with police tape.\nThe fire struck sometime before 7 a.m. and burned completely through the first and second floors, leaving only part of the frame standing. The waterfront home – named “Changing Channels” – was built on stilts, forcing firefighters to climb a ladder onto the house’s deck to reach the first living floor.\nFire Chief Robert Yoho said most of the victims were found in the home’s bedrooms. The only person on the top floor who survived did so by jumping out of a window and into the adjacent canal, he said.\nOfficials said the group was staying at a house owned by the parents of one of the students. Many were friends from the Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, said Dennis Pruitt, the school’s dean of students.\nAssociated Press writers Page Ivey and Jacob Jordan in Columbia, S.C., Mike Baker in Raleigh, and Daniel Yee in Atlanta contributed to this report.