‘Very emotional’: SCAD students lose mementos, portfolios in Atlanta dorm fire
Two coin collections.
That’s about all Dream Hain was able to salvage from her freshmen dorm at Savannah College of Art and Design’s Atlanta campus last week as her eyes watered from smoke still hanging in the air while she rushed to grab her possessions. The coins previously belonged to her father and grandfather before they died in 2019 and 2020.
She kept them in her room along with other sentimental items she inherited. But a small fire, isolated to another dorm unit on her floor, caused smoke and water to damage throughout the Midtown residence hall. She was only allowed to take what wasn’t porous.
“Everything looked, for the most part, maybe like a little wet, but it looked fine. So, that’s what we’re really having a hard time dealing with, too. It didn’t look like we wouldn’t be able to take anything,” she told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a recent phone interview.
Hain, 20, was one of 143 students who lost precious possessions and were forced to move after the April 27 accidental blaze on the seventh floor of the Forty dorm building off SCAD Way and Spring Street. Fire officials said the blaze originated on a mattress and was extinguished by sprinklers before crews even made it to the scene.
No injuries were reported, SCAD is providing on-campus housing and a college spokesperson said leaders are addressing “all other concerns and individual needs.” The college is also working through remediation and repairs in areas impacted by the fire and water.
Several students who spoke with the AJC said gallons and gallons of water poured down causing about 6 inches of water to puddle and then rush into the lower floors of one side of the building.
Many of the students, some from out of state, lost almost everything they owned — including their portfolios, art supplies and school essentials. They must now grapple with the unexpected setback as they near the May 28 end of the academic year. Students on the side of the building affected, from the seventh floor down, have been moved to different dorm rooms.
Janya Reeves, 18, was in an afternoon interior design class when she learned about the fire from one of her roommates. She immediately began to panic — her free-roam, pet bunny, Thumper, was in her seventh-floor room.
“He was found sitting on top of a storage bin of his hay under my bed because the floor had flooded and it was also really smoky in my room,” she recounted, adding that a vet determined Thumper had inhaled some smoke and broken a nail, but was otherwise fine.
Reeves, who said she has several medical conditions, lost numerous medical devices, including a blood oxygen monitor and nebulizer.
Reeves’s roommate, 19-year-old Seidah Muhammad, was also not in the building when the fire alarm went off. The two women shared a pod, which is a dorm section with four rooms, two bathrooms and a shared space. Muhammad lost sketches and sculptures, and the smoke also damaged the dress she wore on her 16th birthday, the outfit she wore when she said goodbye to her dog and an embroidered bag she got from her late grandfather, who died of cancer.
“They were telling us the risk for taking those things was us being exposed to that danger, because the smoke is a carcinogen. So, it was kind of like a full circle moment in my life, which was strange,” she explained.
Muhammad was moved into a room on the eighth floor and said she can hear the dehumidifiers running and drilling as crews restore the floor below.
Zion Lopez was all the way in Toledo, Ohio, at his great-grandfather’s funeral when the 19-year-old got a text message from his aunt about the fire. The following morning, students were escorted back into the building to grab anything they could safely rescue. But Lopez’s flight back to Atlanta wouldn’t be until one more day.
He said the college made an exception for him. Lopez was able to retrieve some leather shoes and jackets on Wednesday, but said he was warned to have the items professionally checked for smoke damage. His portfolio, sketches, baby photographs and other photos with family members and friends were also left behind.
Lopez said he is considering keeping his artwork off campus moving forward.
In the hours and days following the blaze and flood, community members set up donation drives on campus, said 18-year-old Alexander Dufour, who lives in the side of the Forty building that was not impacted. Students left with nothing but the clothes on their back, but were later able to get clothing, undergarments, toiletries, bedding and art supplies.
Dufour’s dorm took zero damage. He said he rushed in to help classmates whenever he could. The night of the fire, he said six people stayed in his four-person dorm as the college worked to set up accommodations.
“It was a bit intense. Very emotional because I went up to floor seven, which not a lot of people had the opportunity to, and they issued us masks and gloves that we had to wear. Still reeked like smoke a day later,” Dufour said.
Students mentioned in this story, and others, have created GoFundMe campaigns. Here is how to help them:
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