Nebraska Wesleyan fire kills one student, injures three

LINCOLN - The news relayed during 4 a.m. phone calls is often bad. But it could have been worse, much worse, for Greg and Diann Bergt.

“I couldn't understand what he was saying,” Greg Bergt said of the phone call he got at his Omaha home Friday morning. “I thought he was saying the car was on fire.”

“I said, 'Who is this?' and he said, 'It's Ross, the Phi Kappa Tau house is on fire.”' Their 20-year-old son was crying as he spoke.

After a fire that torched the stately fraternity house at Nebraska Wesleyan University early Friday, some parents got the sort of calls parents fear the most.

A Nebraska Wesleyan University student, 19-year-old Ryan Stewart of Ord, died Friday from injuries suffered in the fire, said Jan Yaussi, a spokeswoman for Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center. The university said Stewart was a sophomore business administration major.

Yaussi said David Spittler, 20, of Elkhorn, Travis Mann, 22, of Beatrice, and Aaron McGuire, 20 of Sioux Falls, S.D., remained in critical condition Friday evening because of smoke inhalation. All were members of the Phi Kappa Tau fraternity.

“We are deeply saddened to learn of the tragic death of one of our students,” the university said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are also with three other students who are currently being treated at a local hospital.”

School counselors were called in to comfort other students.

Fire officials said the fire started just after 4 a.m. at the fraternity house.

Lincoln Fire Chief Dan Wright said the blaze started in a second-story room and that state and local officials were investigating the cause.

Three students in the house at the time of the fire said they couldn't recall hearing a fire alarm, but Wright said somebody pulled the alarm and that firefighters heard it when they arrived. He said he did not know whether smoke alarms in the building malfunctioned and that investigators will try to find out. Nebraska Wesleyan spokeswoman Sara Olson said the smoke alarms worked.

Police officers on the scene had executed a search warrant and were looking through the building.

“We're interviewing people, looking for a cause - anything, at this point,” said Lincoln Police Sgt. Tom Towle.

The students, who declined to give their names citing an agreement among the fraternity brothers, were still shaken hours after the blaze was extinguished. They described a frantic scene at the time of the fire, with at least two students jumping out of windows and others inside, shirts pulled over their mouths to reduce smoke inhalation, trying desperately to wake up other students and alert them to the fire.

None responded when asked whether there was any late-night partying at the house, but said they and all the other students they were aware of were asleep when it started.

The Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity released a statement about the fire Friday evening.

“The men and alumni of the Upsilon Chapter of Phi Kappa Tau wish to express their sympathy to the family of Ryan Stewart and the families of the other men that are hospitalized in this tragedy,” the fraternity said in the statement. The fraternity members also thanked the university's administration and community for their support.

The house did not have a sprinkler system, which Chief Wright said could have reduced the severity of the fire.

The Phi Kappa Tau house was built in 1928 and is on the National Historic Register.

Firefighters said 39 people believed to be in the house at the time were accounted for, and the fire was extinguished by 7 a.m.

“We were told nobody can go in it until the investigation is complete,” Olson said of the Phi Kappa Tau house. “There was a lot of damage done. It'll be a while before anyone can move back in.”

The brick building was still standing, the only visible damage from the outside a blown-out, second-story window, charred brick and a hole in the roof where flames likely escaped.

Officials plan to move the Phi Kappa Tau members into a vacant section of the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house on the campus until the fraternity house is habitable, Olson said.

The fraternity said its members attended a campus prayer gathering before moving to their temporary quarters at the sorority.

Phi Kappa Tau National President Charlie Bell will visit Nebraska Wesleyan this weekend to meet with members of the local chapter.

Nebraska Wesleyan is a Methodist Church-affiliated liberal arts college founded in 1887. There are 1,800 students enrolled there, according to the university's Web site.