No one hurt in blaze at Sigma Alpha Epsilon on College Street
A fire that destroyed the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity house early Sunday will push forward the fraternity’s plans to locate in Western Kentucky University’s planned Greek Village. “We had already committed to the university to go to Greek Village. We are in the initial phase of a capital campaign to solicit money from alumni to fund the construction of a new house,” said John D. Minton, an alumni adviser to the group. “This will really add impetus to go right ahead with the plan we said we were going to pursue.”
Minton was one of the first alumni to arrive on the scene shortly after 4:15 a.m.
“We all worry about those old houses – alumni and parents,” Minton said. “It was just a horrible prospect of what we might find when we got there. It was sheer relief to count heads and all were accounted for.”
Only four men were in the house at the time of the fire – a group had gone to Keeneland race track in Lexington and several had gone home for the weekend.
“Thankfully the smoke detector worked and woke them up,” Minton, a Kentucky Court of Appeals judge, said.
Fraternity member Michael Casagrande was grateful today that he is unscathed, thanks to a $30 rope ladder his parents had purchased for him.
“I told them it was a waste of money,” said Casagrande, a Louisville junior. “When we moved in, I threw it next to the window so I knew right where it was.”
Casagrande said the smoke detector woke him up.
“I went out in the hall and got one gulp of smoke and couldn’t breath,” he said. “I ran to the window and threw out the ladder. ... I didn’t know it at the time, but (the house) was fully engulfed (in flame) at the bottom of the stairs.”
Casagrande said a brother on the first floor heard two others yelling from the upstairs.
“He drove his truck around and they jumped into it ... and then they heard me around back and came and held the ladder,” he said.
“I called my parents at 4:30 (a.m.) and thanked them for the ladder.”
Recent alumni Chris Trammel and Landyn Garmon surveyed the damage shortly before 10 a.m. Sunday as smoke still wafted from the building and nearby sidewalks were marked with ashes.
The two concurred with others that the fraternity would rebuild, probably in the Greek Village.
The house – at 1410 College St. – was insured and what’s left of it will have to be torn down.
Minton said members hope to salvage a few things – like a statute of Minerva that was pulled Sunday from the rubble and some of the limestone cut from Warren County quarries.
Western plans to buy the property from the fraternity, said WKU President Gary Ransdell.
“It is contiguous to campus” and would therefore be important to the university, he said.
Ransdell is out of town, but got the call Sunday about his former fraternity.
“It is a call you always dread and never want to receive,” Ransdell said. “But we’re so grateful that everyone was safe and the only loss was a material loss. ... We will help them get into their new house just as quickly as possible.”
The university is providing temporary housing for any of the 13 or so fraternity members who need it and helping them get books and school supplies and some personal items, Ransdell said.
“We have a crisis management plan that goes into effect any time you have a situation like this. It all came together yesterday morning,” he said. “We are going to try to get them back into as a normal arrangement as possible.”
Ransdell said the fraternity fire, the second in about seven years, drives home the need for the planned Greek Village, which would be adjacent to campus on the Kentucky Street side with houses constructed for the express purpose of communal living.
“All of those (fraternity) house were not built for that purpose,” he said. “They are old, wooden and have been retrofitted for numerous uses. They just weren’t built to have multiple young people.”
Ransdell said he expects that the fire might push other fraternities to more quickly move to the Greek Village concept. Western has already taken control of the land from the university’s foundation and the next step would be to dole out the property to fraternities interested in the site.
Western hopes during the first phase of the village development to relocate the houses that are north of 15th Avenue, including Sigma Chi, Phi Delta Theta and Sigma Nu and the SAEs.
They are all in or near a historic district.
“And that’s no place for a fraternity house,” Ransdell said.
As for what caused the fire, Bowling Green Assistant Fire Chief Richard Story said he expected it would take several days to make a determination.
“This is another case where sprinklers would have helped,” Story said Sunday before continuing to survey the damage.
Minton said that this morning there still was no determination.
“Just from an observer’s point of view, it looked like there was more fire toward the back,” Minton said.
Two unlikely causes were an ancient boiler in the basement that did have a sprinkler in the room with it. “They told us that probably wasn’t the cause,” he said.
And a kitchen that “probably hasn’t had a meal cooked in it in 20 years,” Minton said.
The SAEs purchased the building in the 1980s from Alpha Tau Omega. For the first 10 years of their life as a campus organization, SAE members resided at 1351 College St.
Casagrande said the university has been great, getting them books and free food today. The fraternity for the rest of the semester will move across the street into a vacant house next to St. Thomas Aquinas, the Newman Center.
While members will spend some time today replacing items lost in the fire, Casagrande said; “It really doesn’t matter. It’s just stuff.
“We’re all alive.”
Bowling Green Kentucky KY Daily News
