OCEAN ISLE BEACH, N.C. - For the group of college buddies spending a late-season weekend at a friend's beach house, the deck overlooking a canal was the center of their good times.
It was where they talked, listened to music and danced late into the night. But investigators suspect the deck, just two blocks from the beach, may also have been the starting point of a fastmoving fire that killed seven people, including a group of high school friends who went off to college together.
"It sounded like they were having a good time. Unfortunately, the fire didn't show any mercy," said Terry Walden, whose 19-year-old daughter, Allison, died in the blaze. "They probably never woke up."
The storm of fire and smoke - so daunting that firefighters radioed for backup before they even arrived at the scene - enveloped the home early Sunday, killing six students from the University of South Carolina and one from Clemson University. Six otherSouth Carolina students in the house survived.
Classes went on as scheduled Monday at South Carolina's Columbia campus, but grief counselors were available for the 27,000 students. Clemson also offered counseling.
About 1,000 people gathered on campus Monday evening to hear words of consolation. "Please reach out to one another, don't let others suffer in silence," University of South Carolina President Andrew Sorensen said.
About 90 miles from Columbia in Simpsonville, more than 100 people gathered at an elementary school to pray for the victims. Officials and other families have said a number of the students killed went to high school together in nearby Greenville.
The house's owner, whose daughter was hospitalized Monday because of conditions from smoke inhalation, said his familywas "numb, shocked and confused."
"There are no words to describe what we've been going through," Chip Auman said at the Carolina Pines Regional Medical Center in Hartsville. "We are living a nightmare."
Katherine Auman, 18, was in stable but guarded condition, he said.
Anna Lee Rhea said her older brother, William, was among the dead - a devastating blow to their older brother, Andrew, who made it out of the house alive. "Everybody loved him. Everybody really misses him," she said in a brief telephone interview from the family's home in Florence, S.C. "You couldn't help but love him."
Officials have said many of the dead were members of the Delta Delta Delta sorority and the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity.
Mayor Debbie Smith said Monday that investigators believe the fire was likely accidental and started in the rear of the house, either on or near the deck facing the canal on the west side of the house.
Investigators should be able to locate an area of origin but may have trouble finding a specific cause, said Rolin Barrett, a consulting engineer with Raleighbased Barrett Engineering who has been involved in almost 1,000fire investigations.
As authorities removed the bodies from the charred home, they found most of the victims in the home's five bedrooms. The only person on the top floor who survived did so by jumping out of a window and into the adjacent canal, said Ocean Isle Beach Fire Chief Robert Yoho.
Investigators quizzed dozens of college students who filled several homes near the site of the disaster. Rebecca Wood, the president of the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity at the University of North Carolina, said police wanted to know if the college students were using a grill or a small outdoor fireplace called a chiminea. She told investigators she didn't see anyone using the chiminea, and all the grilling was done far from the house.
Police in the beachfront community are working with the State Bureau of Investigation and federal officials. The victims' remains are being sent to the state medical examiner's office in Chapel Hill, where autopsies will take place.
"It may be a few days," spokesman Sharon Artis said. "We have not identified any of them yet."Information for this article was contributed from Raleigh, N.C., by Mike Baker and from Columbia, S.C., by Jacob Jordan and Seanna Adcox of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 10/30/2007