A house fire broke out at 708 East Raynor Ave. on Tuesday without injuring any of the eight Syracuse University students who reside there.

Around 4 p.m., three Syracuse Fire Department trucks, one officer from the Syracuse Police Department and one from the Department of Public Safety responded to smoke coming from the top porch of a two-floor house a block down from Sadler Residence Hall, going away from the Carrier Dome.

‘I was very surprised that in that time it didn’t spread more,’ said Brian Allen, a resident of the house and a junior English and textual studies major.

The fire was a trash fire that started spreading to the outside wall on the second floor, said Sgt. Terry Williams of the Syracuse Fire Department.

Minimal damage occurred to the upstairs porch of the house. Williams said the fire also left minimal smoke and water damage to the inside of the second floor.

An hour later, the fire had been out for nearly 20 minutes and two of the fire trucks and the Syracuse Police officer had left the scene. Only one truck remained, cleaning up the firefighting gear.

At the time of the fire, Williams didn’t know what the cause was.

However, Paul Tortora, a resident of the house and a senior political science major, said he thinks the fire was started by one of the roommates smoking on the upstairs porch.

‘It’s pretty clear-out,’ Tortora said. ‘There’s only one guy in the house that smokes.’

The house is comprised of two apartments with four residents each. At the time help arrived, one resident was in the upstairs apartment, while two were in the downstairs area.

‘I was downstairs when they came to the door and were like, ‘Fire! Get out!” said Kelly Sheridan, a senior elementary education major.

She said she was pulled out the front door.

Allen said he was walking home from a class when he saw smoke coming from the front porch of his house. Allen, who is on crutches because of a broken left foot, said he ran to the end of the block, where a Public Safety officer happened to be stopped at a stop sign. The officer then called the fire department, and help soon arrived.

Tortora, Allen, Sheridan and other roommates junior Ted Lee and senior Eric Snyder stood across the street on the sidewalk next to the Carrier Dome parking lot, waiting to hear exactly how damaged their residence was.

The housemates seemed to be in good humor, joking back and forth about the incident.

Published on March 20, 2006 at 12:00 pm