Fire chief hails cooperation as `the best I have seen in 23` years of emergency services'
The Commencement Day fire that killed five students in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house tested the ability of Carolina and Chapel Hill to work together coping with a tragedy.
Chapel Hill Fire Chief Dan Jones said they passed the test.
"The level of cooperation between all the agencies involved was the best I have ever seen in 23 years in emergency services," Jones said.
The University, while hosting Commencement exercises, provided a wide range of workers and resources that made dealing with the emergency easier, he said.
"People realized the gravity of the situation, everybody wanted to help and people were not too concerned about hierarchies or turf-guarding," Jones said. "People worked to get things accomplished. Individuals just did outstanding jobs."
Even though the fire occurred off-campus, the University took on the task of helping the town deal with the emergency, from using Department of Transportation and Parking personnel to manage traffic to counseling friends and families of the victims.
"Everyone pulled together," said Assistant to the Chancellor Susan Ehringhaus, who served as leader of the University's on-site efforts.
"A lot of people deserve our most profound appreciation for their efforts."
The staging area
After the fire struck, the Carolina Inn quickly became host to an emergency staging area.
"I don't know how to describe their effort," Jones said.
The inn's Margaret Skinner said the scene was surreal, with the inn hosting its reservation-only crowd of 600 for Mother's Day brunch on one side of the building while the other side served as a emergency staging area.
The Hill Ballroom was divided into three sections to provide space for a room where friends and family could be counseled, a public information center and a fire investigation center.
Besides drinks and snacks, Carolina Inn staff, led by Manager Terry Murphy, prepared 100 box lunches for firefighters and others working at the scene.
Skinner, the inn's director of sales and marketing, said the inn had what she called a family relationship with the fraternities across the street.
"Sometimes they make a lot of noise
with their parties," she said. "But also, so many of our employees are young people who belong to those fraternities, so there is a warm feeling about them.
"The response was, `This is our family in trouble,'" she said. "We didn't have any employees at Phi Gam, but we could have.
"When there is a disaster, you want to do everything you can and you wonder if what you are doing is enough."
Associate Vice Chancellor for Auxiliary Services Carolyn Elfland, who helped coordinate the response to the fire, said the University was lucky to have a place near the emergency site that could be used for so many purposes. The tragedy pointed out the need for the University's emergency plan to provide for an emergency operations center like the one set up that day in the inn, she said.
The carpentry crew
After firefighters extinguished the blaze, the question that needed a quick resolution was how many people had died in the fire, Elfland said. Although authorities felt they knew how many people hadn't escaped the fire, it wasn't known for sure, she said.
"There were some anxious parents there and we needed to resolve the question as soon as we could," she said.
Before firefighters and investigators could go in, a structural engineer was needed to examine the building. Elfland made a series of phone calls to track down Willie Stewart, an engineer on contract with the University.
About 20 minutes later, he was there and determined the building was unsafe.
Elfland was on the phone again, tracking down Physical Plant personnel who could put together a carpentry crew to go into the damaged building and shore up burned and sagging floors.
Using Stewart's sketches, Maintenance Supervisor Bruce Jones and carpenter Stanley Young led a crew of about eight men who worked for approximately three hours to install timbers to support the floors.
"We are blessed with a good Physical Plant workforce and they always respond," Jones said. "We have some good, dedicated people, some outstanding people who support this University."
Elfland said their work was crucial.
"If we had not had Stewart and the Physical Plant crew here, it may have been until, perhaps, the next morning before we could have a final answer to whether everybody was out of that building," she said.
The information teams
One chore the fire chief said he didn't have to worry about was handling the news media.
It's difficult during an emergency to deal with reporters, photographers and videographers and also to provide timely information to the public, he said.
"There are just so many things to be done," Jones said. "I think we counted something like 70 members of the media at the [Sunday afternoon] press briefing. To meet all their needs takes tremendous effort."
Jane Cousins, spokeswoman for Chapel Hill police worked with Mike McFarland of Carolina's News Services and Kathy Neal of UNC Hospitals' public affairs office.
"They teamed up to handle all the media for us," Jones said.
Meanwhile, Telecommunications provided a technician who worked with Carolina Inn staff to install a phone bank used to field anxious calls.
"We knew people from all over the state would call in and ask, `Was my son or daughter or friend in there? Are they safe?'" Elfland said.
The phones, which rang constantly into the afternoon, were staffed by nurses from Student Health Services.
The command team also worked to keep Chancellor Michael Hooker informed. Just before he went on stage at Commencement, Hooker was provided with the only hard information available--that the fire had resulted in injuries.
The counselors
Local ministers joined personnel from Student Affairs' Dean of Students Office and University Counseling Center to console the victims' friends and relatives.
"Families and friends and other people were in town for graduation," said Ehringhaus. "As word of the fire spread, they arrived at the scene."
Carolina Inn staffers set up a room devoted to immediate family members so that they could have a private place.
Jones said having a place for family members and counselors ready to help them was an important contribution.
"The ability to receive family members and friends of the victims, to receive them with crisis counselors and to be able to provide them with information in a protective environment, that was something we wouldn't ordinarily be able to do," he said.
The administrators
Jones said Carolina's administrators provided tremendous help.
Hooker offered the town the University's resources, he said.
"Having enough people with administrative knowledge, with the ability to make things happen and who knew who to call to get resources freed myself and my officers and [Carolina Public Safety] Chief [Don] Gold to work on operational issues and not have to worry about logistics issues," Jones said.
Ehringhaus agreed it took a team effort that day.
"We really tried to draw on the lessons we had learned from every other time we've put into effect the emergency response program," Ehringhaus said. "We tried to work as a team, with each person supporting each other and each person trying to anticipate needs."
"Everyone recognized the seriousness of the situation and displayed a lot of commitment and a lot of compassion and sensitivity while performing difficult work," she said.
Counseling on frat fire available to employees
Employees who want someone to talk to concerning the way the Phi Gamma Delta fire has affected them have two places to turn: the Employee Assistance Program and Human Resources' Counseling Service.
The Employee Assistance Program serves as a counseling, assessment and referral service through which employees may address any problem affecting their personal or professional lives, said Susan Criscenzo, Orange County's EAP counselor.
The Counseling Service is intended to address job-related issues, said Joe Totten, director of the service.
Both services are free.
After a traumatic event, people often need someone to talk to, Criscenzo said.
"What I find sometimes is that people are surprised that an event has affected them," she said. "They don't necessarily have to be close to the people involved."
If after talking with an employee, Criscenzo thinks the employee needs more help, she will make a referral to an appropriate provider. Criscenzo is familiar with the state benefits package and what types of services are covered.
Much of the Counseling Service's work involves grievances and disciplinary actions. But the center's counselors are available to discuss with employees and managers any job-related difficulties, Totten said.
"We stand ready, willing and able to assist," Totten said. "Such a tragedy has an impact on the community as a whole."
The Employee Assistance Program can be reached at 929-2362 and the Counseling Service at 2-2656.
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