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Collegians Recall Escape From Beach House Fire

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By MEG KINNARD, The Associated Press

Published: October 31, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Fallon Sposato awoke to a blaring alarm and smoke seeping into the first-floor bedroom of the beach house where she and 12 friends had been partying just hours earlier. With her lungs and eyes burning, she ran with her boyfriend through the smoke-filled house, assuming her friends were already outside.

'And then nobody else was out yet,' the 19-year-old University of South Carolina sophomore said during an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Seven students died in the blaze. Six others made it out of the house in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C.

'We were all hysterical. They were holding us back, trying to get our friends,' said Sposato, a native of Orlando.

On Tuesday, officials at the University of South Carolina and in Ocean Isle Beach officially identified those killed in the fire: Cassidy Fae Pendley, 18; Lauren Astrid Kristiana Mahon, 18; Justin Michael Anderson, 19; Travis Lane Cale, 19; Allison Walden, 19; William Rhea, 18; and Emily Lauren Yelton, 19.

Of those who died, six attended the University of South Carolina and the other went to Clemson University.

Many of those staying at the house were members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and Delta Delta Delta sorority, and some had attended high school together in Greenville, S.C.

Sposato, a Delta Delta Delta member, said she and Walden, her roommate and sorority sister, joined the weekend getaway after scrapping a trip to Ohio. They picked the location closer to home, Sposato said, so the sorority members could be back on campus for initiation activities Sunday afternoon.

Several hours later, Sposato would learn her roommate was among the dead.

Another student who made it out of the burning house told ABC's 'Good Morning America' on Tuesday that he decided to jump into the canal behind the house to escape his smoke-filled upper-floor room.

'You knew you had to jump at some point; that was the only option,' Tripp Wylie said on the show.

Debbie Smith, mayor of the resort community, has said investigators think the fire was probably accidental and started in the rear of the house, either on or near a deck facing a canal. That side of the home appeared to be the most heavily damaged. Most of the victims were found in the home's five bedrooms.

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