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| Don Shrubshell photo |
| Ladder trucks surround MU’s Southwest Campus Housing complex yesterday after a fire yesterday at the dorm. |
A lightning strike on Sunday smoldered for three days and became a two-alarm fire yesterday afternoon in the attic of the Southwest Campus Housing complex under construction at the University of Missouri-Columbia.Well, any excuse to take a break from mid-terms, I guess.
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The lightning strike penetrated the building, generating heat in the wooden roof trusses that began to smolder until conditions yesterday allowed more air to reach the attic, feeding the fire and creating flames.
"There was an act of nature on Sunday that started a fire that didn’t show itself until Wednesday," Sapp said. "It is among the strangest causes" of a fire "I’ve seen in my career."
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MU junior Lauri Nichols, 20, was walking home from class to her sorority house on Kentucky when she heard the fire engines.
"I walked out the front door and saw flames and smoke coming out of the top of the building across the street," she said.
Nichols and more than a dozen of her sorority sisters gathered on their front steps to watch the action unfold under sunny skies. Next door, members of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity watched from atop a retaining wall in their front yard. All around the periphery of the taped-off area, students and university employees craned their necks to watch firefighters spray water onto the roof of the building.
Lightning strike sparks delayed fire
