Friday night blaze guts off-campus apartment

A fire gutted the top floor of an off-campus apartment building early Friday night, leaving dozens of students homeless during Spring Fling weekend.

The Philadelphia Fire Department and Penn Police responded to the blaze, which began slightly after 8:30 p.m., on the 4000 block of Spruce Street.

Members of the fire department stated that incense burning in one of the apartments started the fire, which then ran through the entire third floor of 4002 Spruce Street, according to building owner William Schoepe. The third floors of 4000 and 4006 Spruce Street were also damaged, although not destroyed.

"It was total destruction," Schoepe said. "The flames were coming straight out of the roof."

"There's a strong consideration that candles left unattended may have caused that fire," University Police Chief Tom Rambo added.

Because of the concert and the other Spring Fling festivities Friday night, only one student was in the apartments when the blaze began, but students down the entire block heard the fire alarms begin to ring, and many in the vicinity evacuated their homes, Schoepe noted.

Though no one was injured in the blaze, 4002 Spruce Street, an apartment housing four students, was rendered unlivable.

College junior Sheryl Kass, who lives at 4000 Spruce Street, was attending the Spring Fling concert at Hill Field when she received a phone call from housemates for her to come back to their apartment. She said she knew the extent of the damage to 4002 Spruce Street would be severe as soon as she arrived on the scene.

The 24 students who reside in the three apartments were relocated to the Sheraton on 36th and Chestnut streets by Penn officials.

Both Nara Japanese Restaurant and Michael's Custom Cuts, located beneath the apartments, sustained heavy water damage.

"He was in here trying to get his restaurant squared away until four, five o'clock in the morning," Schoepe said of Nara's owner.

Billybob, the popular bar and restaurant at 4000 Spruce Street and relatively empty at the early hour, suffered minimal damage, but did evacuate for some time. The bar reopened later in the night, however.

On Saturday morning, students could still see the remains of charred mattresses strewn on the ground outside Billybob.

Schoepe spent the entire weekend cleaning out the buildings, finally finishing two of the apartments Sunday evening, refurbishing them so that the 20 occupants of 4000 and 4006 could move back in yesterday evening.

Schoepe, who said that he wasrelieved that no one was hurt and impressed with both the fire department and the University, was adamant that students had ample warning about the dangers of burning candles and incense in multiple-person dwellings.

"They are putting everybody at risk," Schoepe said. "These candles can burn and ignite the whole place."

During the Spring Fling weekend of 1999, a fire broke out on the 11th floor of Hamilton College House when a computer monitor overheated and burst into flames. The apartment's residents were not at home when the fire started, and while no one was injured, the apartment was so badly damaged that the residents had to be moved to Sansom Place for the remainder of the semester.

In November of 1999, the first-floor living area of a house on 41st Street was burned after cooking equipment caught fire in the the kitchen. No one was in the residence at the time of the fire, and no one was injured.

In December of 1998, four Philadelphia Fire Department trucks were sent to extinguish a blaze in Hamilton College House, where a resident said a fire started in his garbage can. Fire officials determined that a cigarette was to blame in the incident.

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