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A fire occurred last night at 1470 Seneca Drive, in the Hunters Ridge Condominiums, according to the Blacksburg Fire Department's website.
Jen Wade, a junior accounting major, said she called 911 at 11:02 p.m. Saturday night, after she and her friends saw smoke coming from the building and people gathering outside.
After calling the police, Wade said she ran up the stairs to the second level where the smoke was coming from.
"By the time I got up the stairs they had thrown water on it, and it was out," Wade said. "The door was seared and the carpet was burnt."
While she was observing the damage, she said someone smelled lighter fluid.
When Wade left the scene, and she noticed a dumpster on fire to the left of the building.
"That one was pretty massive," Wade said. "It was almost reaching the tree."
Wade said she spoke with police and firefighters, telling them where the fire occurred.
Wade said as far as she knows, no one was injured, and she is unsure of how the fires started.
The Blacksburg Police and Fire departments were unavailable for comment.
A version of this article appeared in the Oct 10 issue of the Collegiate Times.
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Drunk students most likely.
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1451 had a small fire in it too and all the doors on the first level were covered in lighter fluid
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They were lucky a drunken prank didn't turn into a tragedy. You also have to take into account the time wasted and the risk to police officers and firefighters responding. It never ceases to amaze me how dumb people can be.
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My husband was the one who put out the fire - we saw leaving from visiting our son. We saw it from the road and went to investigate - he knocked on all the doors and got a tub from the girls in the room across from the fire. There were a number of other starter fluid attempts at fires in neighboring condos - definitely not a college prank but the work of someone disturbed. Anyone who knows who did it should turn them in - NOT FUNNY
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My husband was the one who put out the fire - we saw leaving from visiting our son. We saw it from the road and went to investigate - he knocked on all the doors and got a tub from the girls in the room across from the fire. There were a number of other starter fluid attempts at fires in neighboring condos - definitely not a college prank but the work of someone disturbed. Anyone who knows who did it should turn them in - NOT FUNNY
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I'm not so sure this was a prank. A burning dumpster, sure, but from what I heard on the radio during the incident, there was lighter fluid everywhere.
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