Fire at a NC Beach House

Fire at a N.C. Beach House.

Fire at a N.C. Beach House.

(Oceam Island Beach, N.C.)7 South Carolina students were killed by a fierce fire on a Beach House in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C. 6 other student survive the devastated fire. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

Six of the students who died were from the school in Columbia; the seventh attended Clemson University. The six who survived were also from USC.

Officials 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.

The fire struck sometime before 7 a.m. and burned completely through the first and second floors, leaving only part of the frame standing. "We ran down the street to get away," said Nick Cain, a student at the University of North Carolina who was staying at a house about 100 feet away. "The ash and the smoke were coming down on us. We were just trying to get away."

Cain was one of the dozens of college students who filled at least four houses within a block of the burned home. Neighbor Jeff Newsome said the students were going back and forth between the houses all weekend long. "We didn't have any big complaints," Newsome said. "The lights were on all night. They were having a good time."

One witness described seeing three students sitting on the ground screaming as the home burned, and another jumping from a window into a waterway. The heat was so intense the front door was too hot to open, preventing rescue attempts.

The victims' bodies were taken to the state medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill, N.C. Smith said none had been identified.

Ocean Isle Beach is at the southern end of North Carolina's Atlantic Coast, about 30 miles north of Myrtle Beach, S.C.

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