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Doug, I think you could be on to a conspiracy here about why could six people escape and the other seven not.

Sort of like Julienne Malveaux at the One Guilford mtg. "We're talking about prosperity here, but prosperity for whom"? Again a possible conspiracy that the guilford co. leaders and pols were conspiring to exclude certain groups.

It's here and it's everywhere.

Investigators have work to do to determine the cause of this fire and piece together the sequence of events. Six occupants were able to escape. Why couldn't the other seven? It's important to find out.* Doug

True! I am sure there will be report for the public to view......There could be a thousand reasons....why the other occupants escape....The insurance companies and the lawyers will sort it out somewhere down the line as usual. At least you didn't say like Fox News is claiming that a bunch of Muslin terrorists started the fires in Calfornina with Fema confirming the source.

Maybe it's just me, but I thought this topic might not lend itself so much to flippant commentary. Oh, well.

Were the survivors in a part of the house with better exit routes? Or, maybe the question I should be more sensitive than to ask, were some victims in an impaired physical condition? It happens in tragedies like this:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-08-29-campus-fires-cover_x.htm

Pssssttttt....Doug.

How about the possibility that, and I know this could be taken the wrong way and out of context...but what if they were....asleep?

Of course they were asleep.

I mean, like tired.

We rented one of these units last fall, I lasted one night. My opinion, with the large number of people that pile into these units, it a tragedy,waiting to happen. I sure the fire alarms worked. I bet the flames worker quicker. The more people, the more confusion, the greater the risk. I would suggest a maxium number of people in these units. I bet we had 25-30 people in ours.Lower price per person. Even this tight dog, does not like money that well. My prayers to the familes of these young people.

Where were the smoke detectors? If there were functioning smoke detectors in the house, it would seem to me that the noise alarm would awaken most of the folks in the house to enable a timely escape for all of the occupants.

If the Town of Ocean Isle Beach has any housing code, there should have been smoke detectors in the house. I know that the City of North Myrtle Beach has a housing code that requires a smoke detector in each bedroom.

Even if the housing code in Ocean Isle didn't require smoke detectors (which I find difficult to believe), a homeowner could have serious liability issues if the home didn't have at least one smoke detector on each floor.

Don't forget CO detectors. While we don't know yet what caused this fire, we do know that no one hears a smoke alarm after they've succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Enjoy your day off, Doug. Or are you just doing some additional research and putting the finishing touches on a new comprehensive, actually objective piece on the Wray affair that your fans have long been awaiting and that your paper so desperately needs before it's credibility slides totally down the pooper?

Somebody soon must stand in and reconcile the Rhino with the N&R views, and it might as well be you!

Sorry for my absence, Savage. I attended a funeral in Michigan yesterday.

Sorry I won't be able to embark on a 40+ installment series of reports on the police department. By the time I finished, Jerry might be up to 80 installments and you still wouldn't be happy.

Doug, I think you fans would be quite satisfied by a SINGLE installment.

I don't think my happiness enters into it much Doug. If only.

This is a bit of digression, well not really, but if you were Lorraine and you clubbed somebody over their head with a "black book" and it turned out there was a perfectly logical expalanation for the black book, would you, Doug Clark, print an apology?

p.s. sorry I was flip about your absense while you were attending services for somebody's passing. I guess I jumped to conclusions.

(see, it's not that hard. Tell Lorraine )

p.p.s. what is this fixation that the N&R staffers and also Ed Cone have with always taking every chance to put down The Rhino for the length of the Bledsoe piece.

It's like a comphrehensive, in depth, piece of journalism is some kind of anathema to you guys. It's like showing a crucifix to or throwing holy water on a vampire.

As if fighting corrupt government and their media lackeys is not a full-time exhausting job.

Doug, are you "taking the Fifth" on the "if you were Lorraine" hypothetical, or are you busy catching up ?

Don't YOU have anything else to do?

I'm not playing an "if I were Lorraine" game. She's in a different department; we don't work together; I have nothing to do with how she does her job.

Even though the question was hypothetical-an appropriate and expected response.

Doug, you don't look a gift horse in the mouth here.
As an observation on the state of the world, and also quite cynical, if people had something better to do, blogs would quickly become extinct.

We all probably have better things to do, but I find that this blog stuff has a quicksand quality to it. The blog bog maybe?

You're right, Doug. It is a swamp. Why should a mild mannered reporter / columnist, formerly of a small metropolitan newspaper, get involved in the narco-politics of a town he doesn't even live in.

Truth, justice and the American way is for comic books.

I guess we won't be looking up in the sky and saying it's a bird, it's a plane, it's DOUG, anytime soon.

Oh, well.

The people in the house were my friends...they may have been impaired, they may not have been, but the fact of the matter is that seven young lives were lost, and you two are cracking on each other. have some respect for the families and friends who lost someone they love...bicker somewhere else

Thanks for the reminder.