It happened Saturday afternoon, Nov. 2. The third floor of Larch Hall, Wolf House, was mostly empty, and many of the residents were away for the weekend.

Justin Wright was at home in Room 3325. His roommate, Ryan Feddersen, was studying at Durham Hall.

Just before 2 p.m., the lazy afternoon was interrupted when the intense heat from a halogen lamp in the room ignited a comforter on one of the lofts.

“I noticed the fire and I went to find Mike Strange, the house president,” said Wright, freshman in pre-med.

At first, Wright said he wasn’t worried because the blaze was very small. “The fire was no bigger than a stove fire,” he said.

“I went and asked [Strange] where the fire extinguisher was,” Wright said. Strange then called the Ames Fire Department while Wright attempted to douse the flames.

“I went back into the room with the fire extinguisher, and I thought I had it out,” Wright said.

He went to the den and waited for the fire department to arrive, but the fire started up again. This time, Strange pulled the alarm and Wright returned to his room with the extinguisher.

Once again, the fire appeared to be out, and Wright left, but as Department of Public Safety personnel arrived minutes later, it had become a bigger problem.

“They looked into the room and said, ‘We’ve got a fire again,'” Wright said.

DPS evacuated the floor immediately, but Wright said he was puzzled about one thing.

“I didn’t understand why they didn’t just put it out. It couldn’t have been that big. When DPS got there, I thought I had put it out,” he said.

After what had become an inferno was finally extinguished, Wright returned to his room.

“I figured the fire damage would have been kept to where it started. I had no clue about the damage to the floor.”

When it was all totaled up, more than $100,000 in couches, carpet, books, clothes and curtains had been lost.

Almost two weeks after the catastrophe, the 63 men of Wolf House have found places to stay, and despite the upheaval, they are doing well.

The Welch Hall Rec Room, previously a 24-hour study area, has become home to seven of them. One resident even described it as “our little Wolf House.”

“My staff and my house presidents have made an extra effort to touch base with them and see how they’re doing,” said Torin Akey, hall director of Birch-Welch-Roberts Halls. He said a phone line was installed the first day, and Ethernet was hooked up Wednesday.

“The first week was chaotic, having to get used to having seven new roommates and not knowing where anybody else is at,” said Shane Wheeler, junior in history who lived in Room 3321, next door to Wright and Feddersen.

Wheeler said most of the things in his room incurred damage but were not a total loss.

“Anything that was lying on the floor was covered with soot and water. I took pretty much everything out, but all the little things we threw away,” he said.

Juan Tapia, now living in Lyon Hall’s Harwood House, said the Red Cross helped out with the clean-up by donating money.

“They gave us 35 or 40 bucks for washing laundry,” said Tapia, junior in electrical engineering. “We had to do it twice. It smelled terrible.”

Both Tapia and Feddersen said they had to reschedule some tests because the books with which they had planned to study were lost in the fire.

“It was a pain in the neck,” Tapia said. “It’s going to break up my routine again because I’m going to [move] back in a month.”

Feddersen said the money for textbook replacement came out of his pocket, but he said the bookstore did help out by offering a discount.

Gary Schwartz, associate director of the Department of Residence, said the renovation of Wolf House is underway.

“The work is going very well. The clean-up is almost completed,” he said.

About half the house has been repainted, Schwartz said, and drapes, lights and voice and data wiring have been reinstalled.

“We’re still on schedule to have the residents back in their rooms right after Thanksgiving,” he said.

That optimism was echoed by Wheeler, who said the men of the floor have remained in contact despite not living together.

“We had pretty good attendance for our house meetings,” he said.

Happy Joe’s Pizza and KCCQ 107 FM threw a pizza party for the “Wolf men,” and sister houses King, Shilling and Bates have visited the recreation room frequently, Wheeler said.

In the midst of a new home cluttered with televisions, VCRs, clothes, desks and books, the men of Wolf House still maintain a sense of humor.

As a tape of WOI-TV’s coverage of the fire played, someone burst into the door with the news that there had been a fire in Linden Hall (it turned out to be a false alarm).

Wheeler turned with a wry smile and quipped: “Was it a girls’ floor? We got room!”