Quick decision to jump saved student

Greenville resident, 5 others survived beach house inferno

GREENVILLE — Thirty seconds: the amount of time it takes to pour a cup of coffee or say a prayer.

For Tripp Wylie, 30 seconds was the balance between life and death.

Wylie, a University of South Carolina sophomore, woke up early Sunday to find the beach house where he was staying on fire. He ripped the blinds off the wall, threw open the window and kicked out the screen.

Then he jumped — backward.

"I woke up and opened up the door and heard popping from the fire and smoke came pouring in, and I shut the door and tried to figure out what to do next," he said Monday from his home in Greenville.

Wylie and five others survived the fire at a house in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., that took the lives of seven of their friends, including Cassidy Pendley, a 2007 graduate of Fort Dorchester High School.

Wylie, who declined to speak about the other students out of respect for their families, said he has no idea what made him wake up.

"I just feel like God tapped him on the shoulder and said, 'Son, get out.' I don't know if anybody can give me any other explanation," said Wylie's mother, Sydna.

After the fire blocked his way down the stairs, jumping out of the window into the canal below seemed his only option. But Wylie realized he couldn't jump straight down because of the canal's slanted walls. Instead, he jumped out backward.

"It's like a backstroke start where his head would be assured to hit the water first," his mother said. "He's been a swimmer all his life."

Wylie said by the time he dove from the window, landed in the water and turned to look at the house, flames had consumed the room where he was staying. His feet were scraped and he was burned by falling embers, but for the most part he was uninjured.

"Things go through your head, and you don't even know how you got out yourself," Wylie said. "You think a thousand things a second."

Next, Wylie said he ran up the stairs to try to get back in the house, but when he opened the door, the smoke and flames pushed him back and he knew he couldn't go inside again.

Wylie said he knew without needing to ask that his friends had died.

"I had nothing, just completely drained from everything. You can't cry, you can't ... you just can't feel anything," he said.

The trip was a last-minute getaway, Wylie said. Although many of the friends who went belonged to sororities and fraternities, Wylie said it was not a Greek event.

Wylie said he had been friends with some of the students since grade school and met the others at college, and was at loss to describe the pain their parents must feel.

"I don't know what that feels like," Wylie said.

"I lost best friends, and I just can't even imagine what it would feel like to lose a child. I'm 20 years old, and that's a ways out for me, but I know my parents tell me how much they love me, and I just can't even imagine," he said.

Reach Yvonne M. Wenger at ywenger@postandcourier.com or 803-799-9051.