After a small fire at Bones Gate fraternity early Sunday morning activated a smoke alarm, members of the house are glad that there is more than a skeleton of their house left standing.
Two fire trucks, two police cars and four Safety and Security officers were summoned to the scene at 10 Webster Ave. shortly before 3 a.m. Sunday morning to discover that the door to a room on the second floor had been set on fire using charcoal lighter fluid.
The room's occupant, Greg Frank '01, was reluctant to answer questions due to the "ongoing arson investigation" he pointed out is being pursued by the Hanover Police Department, but did give a description of the fire.
"The fire crawled into the room from a crack in the door, it was maybe a foot, a foot-and-a-half high of flame and then we beat it out," Frank said.
He noted that it was especially hard to exit the room because the lighter fluid had been applied directly around the door latch.
Frank said he and two other occupants of the room -- Frank's girlfriend and another close friend who is not a member of Bones Gate -- beat the flames back with a jacket in the room and then left.
Bones Gate fraternity President Alexander Liroff '02 said Frank had not heard or seen anyone suspicious before he noticed the fire.
According to Liroff, Frank can think of no reason why anyone would wish to harm him. Campus Security officers have asked members of the house whether Bones Gate has adversaries among other fraternities or sororities on campus, Liroff said.
"We can't think of anyone who would have something against us, which makes it even more disturbing," he said.
The last fire at a CFSC house was in early December of 1999 when Phi Delta Alpha fraternity member Damien Williams set part of Chi Gamma Epsilon fraternity's house aflame.
Fires on college campuses have been a hot topic of concern in the media in the past year, mostly stemming from a massive fire in a Seton Hall University dormitory in January of 2000 which claimed the lives of three students and injured nearly 60 more.
Last winter, a fire at Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity on the Bloomsburg University campus left three of its members dead and was a haunting reminder of a fire only six years before at the exact same house which left five students dead.
A fire at a fraternity house at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill killed five students in 1996.
Dartmouth officials said then that a similar accident was unlikely to happen on this campus due to the College's excellent sprinkler system.
However, at this time last year, 19 of the College's 68 undergraduate buildings were still without sprinkler systems, though Director of Residential Operations Woody Eckels told the campus then that a massive installation of systems was planned.
Of the 19 undergraduate buildings unequipped with sprinklers, only one, Gamma Delta Chi fraternity house, is not an undergraduate resident hall.
Bones Gate is sprinkler-equipped.
College smoke detectors are programmed to go off when the heat in a given room rises to 155 degrees Fahrenheit.
Liroff said he was awoken by the smoke alarm and, assuming it was a false one, set off downstairs. Upon reaching the second floor, however, he smelled smoke and saw Frank's door.
Minimal damage was done to the still-functioning door, Liroff told The Dartmouth, and it does not need to be replaced.
He characterized the event as "more psychologically damaging" than physically damaging.
Liroff said he does not believe a member of the house ignited the fire. "At first you think about that, but I've talked to everyone in the house and it's pretty clear it's not anybody.
Safety and Security would not comment on the ongoing investigation, as Sergeant Investigator Lauren Cummings called the inquiries "sensitive," and noted the findings they had made were extremely preliminary in nature.
In 1996, brothers in Bones Gate came under investigation when a false fire alarm summoned police and Campus Security officers who made "inadvertent" discoveries of illicit drug use when the house was evacuated.
Liroff said the Campus Security officers are compiling a list of people in the house from between 2 and 3 a.m., saying he guessed they would try to question them individually.
