Two Boston University students were killed in a fire in an apartment building near South Campus early Saturday morning, and another student was hospitalized and was listed in serious condition as of yesterday evening.
School of Management senior Stephen Adelipour, 21, and College of Arts and Sciences junior Rhiannon McCuish, 21, died shortly after 5 a.m. Saturday as a fire swept through Adelipour’s 21 Aberdeen St. apartment, where both were found.
CAS senior Steven Boursiquot, who lives in the apartment, was injured in the fire and is in serious condition at the Massachusetts General Hospital Intensive Care Unit, according to hospital officials.
The fire was caused by a burning candle in the right rear bedroom of the students’ top-floor apartment, said Boston Fire Department spokesman Steve MacDonald. Adelipour, of Great Neck, N.Y., and McCuish, of Mashpee, were pronounced dead at the scene.
The fire spread to neighboring 19 Aberdeen St., causing approximately $1 million in total damages, MacDonald said. He said both buildings’ smoke detectors sounded when the fire started and blared for three hours.
Approximately 90 firefighters responded to the scene at 5:18 a.m. after receiving a call four minutes earlier from NStar employees in the area, MacDonald said. Employees had been repairing a power outage in the street that began at 9 p.m. Friday.
Employees witnessed flames and smoke coming from the top-floor windows of 21 Aberdeen St., MacDonald said. Five NStar employees ran into the building while another called the fire department, said NStar spokeswoman Caroline Allen.
“We heard the fire alarm going off in hallways . . . . NStar guys [were] running around the building telling us to get out,” said 21 Aberdeen St. resident Emily Hill, a January 2007 BU graduate who lives in the basement floor unit.
NStar employees could not access residents on the top floor, Allen said. When firefighters eventually reached the top floor, they had difficulty entering because of the “thick, black smoke” and “heavy flames,” MacDonald said.
“There were people running out the building,” MacDonald said. “They didn’t have shirts, shoes.”
Firefighters took about 30 minutes to control the fire and spent the next few hours ripping open ceilings and walls to determine if the fire had spread, MacDonald said. He said the 19 Aberdeen St. building had extensive smoke damage and some broken windows, but the top floor of 21 Aberdeen St. was “pretty much gutted” and had its roof burned off.
“The whole apartment is a total loss . . . . Basically, the building is uninhabitable,” he said. “The building is going to have to be brought up to code . . . . Realistically, it will be months, not weeks.”
Although most of the building was destroyed, its front did not sustain extensive damage, MacDonald said.
BU has contacted about eight students who live at 21 Aberdeen St., offering them emergency housing at the Holiday Inn in Brookline, said BU spokesman Colin Riley.
Residents of BU-owned 25 and 27 Aberdeen St. were evacuated to the Sargent Activities Center gymnasium on University Road on Saturday morning until Boston Police Department officers who secured the crime scene released them.
MacDonald said students in Aberdeen Street apartments not at 19 and 21 Aberdeen St. were allowed to return to their homes later Saturday evening.
In an email to the BU community Saturday evening, Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said, “The death of any member of our community is a tragedy that saddens us all, no matter the cause or reason.”
University chaplains held grief counseling in Marsh Chapel yesterday afternoon.
Staff reporters Lisa Davis, Joseph Laflamme, Marcos Lopez, Matt Negrin and Barbara Rodriguez contributed reporting to this article.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
