When Kelly Barker was awakened Thursday morning by a buzzing noise, she thought it was a roommate’s alarm clock.
But when she opened the door and was met with a cloud of smoke, she knew otherwise.
“The entire hallway was filled with smoke and I started panicking,” said Barker, a supply chain management senior. “I opened the bathroom door, woke up my roommates and called 911.”
A fire at Barker’s home at 118 Linden St. - right across the street from the East Lansing Police Department - started on the second floor around 8:05 a.m., when four of the six residents were sleeping.
All evacuated without injury and the fire was extinguished in 18 minutes.
The four girls who were home took refuge at the police station, and by the time the fire was out, they had gone from crying to a state of disbelief.
“I am still in shock,” said Hillary Andersen, a communication senior who ran out of the house wearing her leopard slippers and pajamas. “I just can’t believe how fast it spread.”
The fire started in a second-floor bedroom that belonged to a woman that had already left for work. She arrived back at the house to find her room basically destroyed.
East Lansing fire Deputy Chief Terence Lapinski was among the first to arrive on the scene. He said when he arrived, there was heavy smoke. All the windows were broken to help put out the fire.
There was extensive damage to the house - $20,000 in structural damage and $25,000 worth of contents were destroyed - from the heat and smoke, Lapinski said.
Included in the damage were the dresses to be worn at the women’s sorority formal, scheduled for Thursday evening.
Lapinski said the downstairs had little damage aside from anything that may have been destroyed from the water. The women should be able to return to most areas of the house within a few weeks.
East Lansing Fire Marshal Bob Pratt said the cause of the fire was based on a combination of factors, including the overloading of a circuit and from the use of extension cords.
“When people use extension cords and place things on top of them, there is a chance for the wires inside to fray,” Pratt said. “Also - like was most likely the case today - if the wires are underneath something it also increases heat build up.”
Pratt suggests people use surge protectors instead of extension cords as a safer alternative.
Extension cords should be kept for temporary use, like when using a vacuum cleaner, Pratt said.
While electrical fires are the third most common type after careless smoking and cooking, Pratt said there was one thing for sure that helped the fire’s destruction stop before anyone got hurt.
“In a fire like this when people are still in bed, it very easily could have been a tragedy if they hadn’t had a working smoke detector in that bedroom,” he said.
Pratt encourages people to purchase detectors for every room of their home, and perform monthly tests.
“Smoke detectors have been proven to save lives over and over,” he said.
“This is another great example.”
Rachel Wright can be reached at wrightr9@msu.edu.
