Blaze that killed 7 college students at North Carolina beach house may have started on deck

A fire at a North Carolina vacation house that killed seven college students taking advantage of the last good beach weather may have started on a porch.

It was where they talked, listened to music and danced late into the night. But investigators fear the deck just two blocks from the beach may also have been the starting point of a fast-moving fire that killed seven people, including a group of high school friends who went off to college together.

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 other South Carolina students in the house survived.

Chip Auman, whose family owns the beach house and whose daughter was injured in the fire, said his relatives were "numb, shocked and confused."

"There are no words to describe what we've been going through," Auman said at the Carolina Pines Regional Medical Center in Hartsville, South Carolina. "We are living a nightmare."

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.

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. That side of the residence appeared to be the most heavily damaged.

Investigators should be able to determine where the fire started, but may have trouble finding a specific cause, said Dr. Rolin Barrett, a consulting engineer with Raleigh-based Barrett Engineering who has been involved in almost 1,000 fire investigations.

"So many things are consumed in fire that you can't tell what they were like beforehand," he said. "If a cigarette did it, then the cigarette was probably consumed."

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 did not see anyone using the chiminea, and all the grilling was done far from the house.

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Associated Press writers Mike Baker in Raleigh, N.C, Jacob Jordan in Hartsville, South Carolina and Seanna Adcox in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.