URI campus unites to aid tenants after house fire

04/25/08 - After an accidental kitchen fire left three University of Rhode Island sophomores essentially homeless, administrators at the university and one sorority banded together to help get the girls' lives back on track.The April 1 fire damaged about $25,000 worth of belongings and left $75,000 worth of damage at the 31 Joy Lane residence in Bonnet Shores, according to a police report.

The fire started while the students were making homemade donuts and covered a pot with oil in it. The oil ignited and burned down the kitchen, causing severe smoke damage to the rest of the house in the process. All three residents safely evacuated the house with no injuries.

Resident Danielle van Vierssen, who was on the phone with her mother when the fire began, said, "My initial reaction was 'everybody just get out of the house.'"

At that point, Holly Clark, van Vierssen's roommate, threw a blanket on the flames in the hopes of extinguishing the fire. It worked, momentarily.

"It went out for a minute, and then blew up," Clark said. Smiling, she continued, "For a second, I thought 'Oh my God, I saved the house.'"

Though Clark, van Vierssen and other housemate Brittney Hattoy can cautiously joke about the incident today, all three said there have been hardships since the fire.

"Our entire kitchen is just gone," van Vierssen said.

Later, Clark said, "You can't explain what goes through your mind ... you go into legitimate shock."

The residents are not all from Rhode Island, and receiving new bedding or extra belongings was cumbersome. The Hattoy family, from Coventry, R.I., allowed the girls to stay at their house for a few days. Van Vierssen is from York, S.C., and Clark is from Norfolk, Va.

"We were so unorganized," Hattoy said.

Van Vierssen said the girls had nothing but the clothes on their backs for the first week, and had to send the clothes that could be salvaged to be specially cleaned. The bill for each of them was about $500.

The last month's rent for their residence was returned, and van Vierssen said she believed insurance would cover the damages done to the house.

"I spoke to one of the girls just the other day, and she said her life was just beginning to get back to normal," Dean of Students Fran Cohen said Monday, three weeks after the incident.

The students needed housing, clean clothing and food. One meeting the morning after the incident with Hattoy's adviser, assistant professor in the school of education Diane Kern, set numerous university departments into motion to assist the girls.

"She's probably the nicest lady I've ever met," Hattoy said.

Kern took the students out to lunch and contacted Cohen, who then e-mailed several departments within Student Affairs, to which Cohen is the assistant vice president.

"They came to campus realizing they couldn't go to classes and didn't know what to do," Kern said. "It really was a blessing to be here when they needed someone."

Kern said before the event, she and Hattoy had had a "normal adviser-advisee relationship," but the experience has brought her closer to all three students.

"I'll certainly be crying at their graduation, I can promise you that. It was really a life -changing experience for all of us," she said.

Cohen recalled the day after the fire. "They still looked like they were smudged with soot, and still going on adrenaline," she said.

Administrators within the departments of Housing and Residential Life, Dining Services, along with the sorority Chi Omega and Health Services, quickly put together what they could to help the girls soon after receiving Cohen's emergency e-mail.

Chip Yensan, director of HRL, said the immediate need was a new home for the students. He said the department looked at the vacancies within housing, with special attention to put the girls in the same room, if not the same building. Yensan said within two hours of receiving Cohen's call, the student's identification cards were activated for their new home, Burnside Hall.

"We were fortunate enough to find one cluster vacancy," Yensan said Tuesday. The students are paying a pro-rate based on the number of days left in the semester.

Yensan said it was pure luck finding a single for van Vierssen and an empty room for Hattoy and Clark, but said the biggest concern was finding any type of housing for the displaced students.

"We would have looked for every possible option ... from best to worst," he said. "We pretty much have an idea of where the vacancies are ... it was a matter of doing a scan."

Yensan said though his department was glad it could help the girls, university officials stepping up to help students is not a rare occasion.

"We talk about it or write about it, but it happens all the time," he said. "Each is unique and separate and personal ... other than to do our best, we just do the right thing."

Along with HRL, Dining Services provided meal plans just two days after the fire for van Vierssen and Clark, who did not already have campus meal plans.

Gianquitti said Tuesday each individual plan would cost about $402, but they are pro-rated to only include meals that are being used the rest of the semester.

The other priorities for the students were clothing and textbooks. Clark said she grabbed the girls' laptops upon exiting the house, but a few textbooks that were on the kitchen counter were damaged.

Luckily, the students' professors loaned them any necessary books, but that didn't mean that the URI Bookstore hasn't already prepared to help out.

Director of the Bookstore Paul Whitney said employees of the store had already sent out order requests for the books required in the students' majors: ocean engineering, education and human and family development.