On Sunday, May 12, 1996, UNC’s Phi Gamma Delta house caught fire, leading to the deaths of students Ben Woodruff, Anne Smith, Joanna Howell, Josh Weaver and Mark Strickland. It was Graduation Day, and it was Mother’s Day. In the months and years that followed, some of the people impacted by the fire turned their grief and trauma into a drive towards advocate for fire safety, hoping to help avoid a similar disaster affecting the community again.
Now, just more than 30 years later, 97.9 The Hill’s Henry Taylor sat down with four of the people impacted by or directly involved with the fire to hear about the day itself, and the three intervening decades since. He spoke with Dan Jones, Chapel Hill’s fire chief at the time, Bonnie Woodruff, the mother of one of the five victims and Buddy Hyde, a former fire captain and ladder truck operator. He also spoke with President of the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Chamber Aaron Nelson, who was UNC’s student body president in 1996. Here’s what they told us:
Dan Jones: Well, I started in Florida, went up through the ranks, and then I left there in 1990 and came to Chapel Hill as fire chief. [The fire] was May 12, it was a Sunday. It was Mother’s Day. It was graduation day for the university, which is always a big day here in Chapel Hill, as everybody knows. Two [911] calls: one from the neighboring fraternity house and one from across the street at the Carolina Inn. And that was about 6:00 in the morning. It was reporting heavy fire at the Phi Gamma Delta house.
The fire started in the basement, in a trash can. There’d been a party the night before, a graduation party sponsored by parents. Some fathers and sons were standing around a bar enjoying cigars, and some of the cigars got put into a trashcan. And we were able to determine that’s where the fire started.
Bonnie Woodruff: It was Mother’s Day, and we had plans to go to church with our mothers. And Ben was supposed to join us at church. So when I got there, I slipped over and made room for him on the bench. And, you know, as the service continued and he wasn’t there, I was getting a little upset. [I was] trying not to be angry since it was Mother’s Day, but I was quite upset that he did not show.
We were all going over to my husband’s brother who lived in Smithfield for lunch. We got there and got out of the car and we were getting ready to go in the house and my brother-in-law’s car drove up. And [my husband] Leon got out of the car and his mother wasn’t with him, and I though that was strange. And he came over to me and he said, “Bonnie, there’s been a fire in Chapel Hill, and we fear the worst. They can’t find Ben.”
Aaron Nelson: I chose to run for student body president, was elected successfully, and then [was] sworn in. [The] term begins in April, runs through the summer, and then the following year. We were headed towards graduation. There’d been some parties and hanging out with friends. That morning, first thing in the morning, my phone rings, and it is a phone call letting me know that there has been a fire on campus. It wasn’t known if students had died yet. It wasn’t known how many students might still be in there. And so over the course of the day, that information became clearer.
Jones: The first units that responded from the downtown station reported smoke showing as soon as they pulled out of the front of the station. And when they arrived, they reported that there was fire showing from the windows. Three of the students who were in the house had already escaped. Two of them had jumped from an upper story window. One got out the fire escape. We were told by campus police officers when we first arrived that there could be as many as 20 more kids in the house, which was scary because we knew at that point they weren’t gonna be able to be saved.
Buddy Hyde: On the day of the fire, I was captain at Station 3 where the tower truck, aerial ladder truck was positioned. And we had three on duty, and we responded with that. I still have a pretty vivid memory of what things looked like when I rolled up on scene. I do remember the people laying in the front yard that morning being cared for by bystanders.
Jones: Fire personnel tried to enter the building both from the front door, which is actually above where the fire started, and from the backyard through the basement. There was so much fire, neither one could get more than just a couple of feet inside the building. And then the roof started to cave in, and so we had to pull those crews out to make sure they weren’t trapped.
While we were fighting the fire, the graduation was going on in Kenan Stadium. Witnesses told us later that the smoke was wafting through the stadium. They could smell the smoke during the graduation ceremonies. And then the street started to fill up with students in Carolina Blue graduation gowns. It was a surreal scene. Crowds of people in graduation gowns standing in the street in front of the house when had the fire out and were searching for the bodies. And all five students basically lived locally. And so their parents began to arrive at the scene.
The Phi Gamma Delta house after the fire had been extinguished (Image via Dan Jones).
Woodruff: My husband, who was obviously upset, drove and we got there. We went to the Carolina Inn. That’s where everything was happening. And there was acrid smoke over the Carolina Inn and the Phi Gam house, which was close by. And we spent the rest of the day in a in Chapel Hill waiting to get confirmation, real confirmation. And Dan Jones actually was the fireman that came in and confirmed that they had found Ben’s body.
I mean, I can’t even tell you all the people from Raleigh that came over. When we left, they were standing in the hall. And I mean, everybody was stunned and crying, and we just wanted to get home at that point.
Nelson: I remember the empathy of thinking about how hard that must be to be the parent… to be the student who made it out, to be the friend of the student who didn’t… to have been at the party and wished you had been more careful. You know, there’s just so much regret and remorse that must have just sat so heavily.
Woodruff: Every morning, I’d get dressed. I’d look in the mirror and I’d say, “It’s showtime, folks.” And I’d plaster a big smile on my face, which was so far from what was inside me. We were broken. I mean, we were literally broken. I just remember being in the basement at the beach folding towels and thinking, “Okay, Ben, you know, it’s been six weeks now.” And I would go that long maybe without seeing him. But I said, “It’s time for you to come on home now. I just miss you too much.” And then, you know, the reality hits that that’s just not gonna happen. And you just, I don’t know how to tell you. You live day to day.
Nelson: The memorial service was extraordinary and really shaped, for me, how we celebrate people’s lives. At the Carolina Inn, the place was filled. A few opening comments were made, but then it was this Quaker style… There were a few microphones and anybody who wanted could stand and say anything they wanted. Or we would just sit quiet. Unscripted, uncoordinated, just an open space for people to express themselves. And it was really wonderful. It was magic. It felt like the cathartic time that people needed to say their piece. And then everybody files out and the fire department in their honor guard uniforms are standing at the steps of the Phi Gam house. The Phi Gam house is burned behind them. And each student, one at a time, lays a flower. These thousand flowers just across that low stone wall in front of the fraternity house. I remember that.
It just was so palpable, this feeling of, it was just tragic, right? Everybody who sends their kids to college expects them to come home. And Dan Jones wanted to make sure that that didn’t happen to anybody else. And so we were gonna go on a sprinkler installation crusade.
Jones: Had there been a sprinkler system, the fire would’ve still started in that trash can and probably spread to the bar area, which was all made out of wood. That’s as far as it would’ve went. The sprinkler system would’ve activated one, maybe two sprinkler heads. It would’ve, if not put the fire out, suppressed the fire enough that it would’ve created no life risk.
Hyde: We all know that the fraternity house was an example, and I think all the studies the NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) did and, and all the different agencies that Chief Jones had to come in and, and talk to during the investigative part of this showed that early suppression, early detection would allow people to get out. Immediately when this fire happened, he immediately looked at the sprinkler codes and all of the codes that deal with fraternity houses, dormitories, and things like that.
Jones: The university ramped up their safety education systems. The governor put up a budget line and said that he wanted sprinkler systems in all the dormitories. He basically ordered that for the UNC system. The chancellor and the university administration was very supportive of anything we wanted to do. The sprinkler ordinance that we originally tried to get passed, that got passed in record time. We had to go to the state legislature and get authorization for it. That passed very quickly. Within nine months, we had sprinkler requirements in place for the fraternity and sorority houses.
For a number of years following that fire, one of the parents of Ben Woodruff, who was lost in the fire, Bonnie Woodruff… Bonnie and I teamed up and have advocated for safety measures, both on campuses and and in other places, trying to push the idea of safety through fire sprinkler installations.
Woodruff: Dan Jones is the reason that I was able to do what I did. None of the other moms really wanted to say anything or do anything, but he encouraged me. And from the get-go, he would take me places and encourage me to speak. And eventually I got my voice. I had a voice and I had something I wanted to say and I felt like I was saving lives.
There was a group called Common Voices, and it’s a group of parents who have lost children or husbands. And we became advocates for fire sprinklers. And that’s when everything sort of opened up for me. This group, I would’ve never known any of them, and they all had had fire deaths. And so we became very close and we advocated together. We traveled together. And I credit Dan with bringing me to that point that I met all these people and sort of became whole again. I won’t say I’m whole. I will tell you that each time I spoke, there was a little bit of that broken heart that filled in.
I can’t tell you, the letters I got from parents or from other boys that I didn’t even know telling me things that Ben had done for their son… I knew he was a caring, kind individual, but he just gave of himself to others. I mean, he did some stupid things, but he would never hurt anyone. He was just a good guy. I wish I could say, “Oh, if you did this, then this would happen if you did that.” But it doesn’t work that way. Grief is all consuming. It takes every bit of your energy just to get through the day. The thing that I say is just keep keeping on. That’s all I can say.
Jones: Fire safety is not just something for elementary school kids. It’s not Smoky the Bear and stop, drop and roll. It’s understanding your responsibility at any age for protection of yourself, your loved ones, your pets. Do you have smoke detectors in your home? Do you keep the batteries fresh? Have you talked about an escape plan with your family members? If you have students going away to college, ask the questions. Are the dormitories sprinklered? And if they’re not sprinklered, the Greek housing’s not sprinklered, find another university for your kid.
Featured image via Dan Jones.
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