It’s unclear when — or if — five Syracuse University students will be able to move back into their house on Ostrom Avenue this school year after a fire broke out inside it on Tuesday.

“The house is pretty messed up,” said Corey Gibson, a senior marketing management major who was in the house when the fire started. “I think we’re looking at some time before we can get back in.”

The owner of the house, Jim Medcraf, couldn’t be reached for comment.

The fire broke out on the second floor of 773 Ostrom Ave. at about 3:40 p.m. Tuesday and spread to the attic. A district chief in the Syracuse Fire Department said no one was in the house when the fire started, though Gibson said he was home at the time. He lives with four other people and said they were all in class.

Most of the students who live in the house are staying with friends, he said. Gibson said he has been in and out of Syracuse because he’s finishing up his community service requirement for his degree. He said he has the option to go back home to Rochester, N.Y., if he needs to.

The American Red Cross and SU have been “more than supportive,” he said. The Red Cross gave the students some money for food on Tuesday, and the university offered to help by providing housing in empty residence hall rooms or in the Sheraton University Hotel and Conference Center, he said.

Gibson said he was on his computer when the power in the house went out. He said he didn’t think it was strange — a circuit could’ve been overloaded. But then he heard a noise, and shortly after, a smoke alarm went off in a room upstairs, Gibson said.

He kicked open the door to the room to find it filled with smoke, and called 911.

He said he thinks it was an electrical fire because there was a large black spot near an outlet and another in the attic after the fire. Firefighters had to tear the walls apart, he said, and there are holes and debris everywhere.

The house was built in 1920, according to public records. It was built with balloon construction, which means there are void spaces that can allow fires to spread easily from floor to floor.

Published on April 18, 2013 at 12:04 am

Contact Dylan: dmsegelb@syr.edu | @dylan_segelbaum