3 die in Seton Hall dorm fire

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - Fire broke out in a Seton Hall University dormitory early today as hundreds of students were asleep, killing three people and injuring 58, four of them critically.

Screaming students in pajamas hastily grabbed coats and fled into bitter predawn cold. One leaped from a window.

The blaze in six-story Boland Hall, a freshman dorm, began about 1:30 a.m. PST, university spokeswoman Lisa Grider said. It apparently started in a commons area on the third floor, pouring thick, black smoke out of the windows. The cause of the fire was under investigation.

After a series of false alarms last semester, many of the more than 600 students in the dorm rolled over to go back to sleep when the fire alarm rang, thinking it was another prank.

"When people came out with black stuff on their faces and yelling, `Help me! Help me!' that's when reality set in," said 18-year-old Vanessa Gomez, a freshman from Hagerstown, Md.

Two of the dead were found in the commons area; another person was found in a nearby room, and attempts to revive that victim failed, said Donald Campolo, Essex County prosecutor.

Names of the victims were not immediately released.

The 48-year-old building did not have sprinklers because it was built before they were required, the prosecutor said.

Fire hoses inside the building had been disconnected from the pipe system, but Campolo said firefighters wouldn't have used those hoses anyway because of uncertainty about whether they were in working order. Grider said the hoses had been disconnected because they were obsolete.

Students said they have seen people smoking in the lounge even though it's prohibited. Asked if careless smoking may have caused the fire, Campolo declined to answer, saying he didn't want to speculate.

"This is a huge tragedy," Gov. Christie Whitman said, touring the campus of the Roman Catholic school 15 miles southwest of New York City.

"There's not much you can say at this time," Archbishop Theodore McCarrick said. "We're glad we're people of faith."

Witnesses said at least one student leaped from a third-floor window of the brick building. Others crawled down corridors to stairwells. Some students tied sheets together to climb down from windows, but firefighters arrived in time and rescued them by ladder, said 18-year-old Jake Archer of Trenton, who fled from his second-floor room.

Freshman Andrew Landers said he saw a couple of women in a window. "They were screaming and they were trapped," Landers said. "They looked like they had nowhere to go, and they were hanging out the window because the whole floor that they were in was filled with smoke, black smoke."

The students, who had returned from winter break last Thursday, were awakened by fire alarms. Archer said four false alarms emptied the building on the first night of final exams last semester.

Campolo said there had been 18 false alarms since September.

Tim Van Wie, 18, who escaped by crawling down the corridor near where the blaze broke out, said one of his friends jumped out a third-floor window and apparently suffered a broken wrist and sprained ankle.

Classes for the university's 10,000 students were canceled today. Tonight's women's basketball game at Boston College was postponed, as was a home wrestling match against Rutgers University scheduled for tomorrow.

Among those injured, 54 were students, school officials said. In addition, two firefighters and two police officers were hurt.

Most of the injured were treated at hospitals or at the scene for smoke inhalation and burns. Three students were listed in critical condition in the burn unit at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston; one was in critical condition at University Hospital in Newark.