Copyright 2006 The Post and Courier (Charleston, SC)
All Rights Reserved
By NADINE PARKS
The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.)
The owner of an apartment where two teens died in a Memorial Day fire said he is tormented by the deaths and has racked his mind worrying whether he could have done something different.
“It tore me all to pieces,” J. Pappy Williamson said Tuesday, recalling the moment he watched firefighters bring the youths out of the Dickson Avenue duplex in Hanahan. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
A cigarette on a couch next to the front door likely caused the early morning fire that killed teen cousins Matthew MacIsaac and Joshua Propes, both of Cottageville, said Hanahan Fire Chief Jerry Barham. He said there was no smoke detector or fire extinguisher in the apartment. Neither are required by law, he said.
The front door and window in the living room caught fire. There is no back door to the one-bedroom apartment that was built as a barracks for Army troops during World War II, Williamson said.
A kitchen window was blocked by an air-conditioning unit, leaving a third window in the bedroom as the sole means of escape. Propes was found in a bed and Mac-
Isaac in the shower, the fire chief said.
While construction standards call for a second door in some new apartments, depending on their size, there is no such requirement for existing units, said Hanahan Building Official Marie Fredrickson.
Propes, 16, was a former student at Summerville High School and in the Givhans Alternative Program in Ridgeville. MacIsaac, 15, was an eighth-grader at Colleton Middle School.
Propes moved from Summerville to Cottageville about a month ago, and the cousins had been inseparable since, said MacIsaac’s mother, Mary MacIsaac. They enjoyed skateboarding, riding bikes and sports after school, she said.
Above all, the pair loved playing video games, said Propes’ sister, Margaret Kappel. She said the youths spent Saturday night with Propes’ older brother, Sam Jimerson, at Jimerson’s apartment in Hanahan. Jimerson told the family he asked the youths to come with him when he decided to go out to visit a friend, but the youths preferred to stay and play their game.
Jimerson didn’t return to the apartment that night, Kappel said.
“I thank God he didn’t make it home,” she said. “Then I would have lost both (brothers).”
The fire chief said it’s up to renters to have a plan of escape in case of fire and to install smoke detectors for early warning.
Williamson said he plans to buy detectors and fire extinguishers for the tenants of the nine apartments he purchased in February across the street from his Pappy’s restaurant on the corner of Remount Road. Williamson lives in an apartment above the restaurant and has no back door either. He’s planning his own emergency exit now, he said.
Eight-two percent of all fire deaths occur in the home, and smoke detectors reduce the chance by nearly one-half, according to the U.S. Fire Administration.