For 11 Brandeis students and three others evacuated from their South Street house last Monday following a kitchen fire, the first week of the new semester has been filled with moving: moving out, moving in and moving forward. The fire began at 8:30 a.m. as Deborah Lyon '06 was cooking Tater Tots in her top-floor unit, residents and authorities told the Justice. Most of the damage to the house was confined to the third-floor kitchen, but other areas of the house suffered extensive smoke and water damage, authorities said.

As a result, the Brandeis students turned to the Department of Residence Life for temporary on-campus accommodations. Each was given a place to stay until the house is repaired.

"I think that fortunately for us [this sort of situation] doesn't happen often," Assistant Dean of Student Life Maggie Balch, who oversees Residence Life, said. "The luck of it is that it happened spring semester when people go abroad. We have extra space when all the juniors vacate."

Balch did not remember where specific students were being housed, but she said the majority of available rooms are in the Village, Ziv and Ridgewood quads. Balch says she was told that two of the students would need housing for about one month while the other nine expected to return to their house by the end of last week.

The fire has made life a little more hectic for the effected students. Matthew Francis '07, who lived in the first-floor of the house, is currently living in the Village. Francis is very pleased with the response by Residence Life.

"Brandeis was awesome," Francis said. "They gave us all free housing in the Village."

Francis and others were fortunate in that none of their belongings were damaged, with the exception of their food, which is "nothing that can't be replaced," Francis said.

But his life was "out of order" the first two days after the fire.

"It made Monday and Tuesday pretty ridiculous," he said. "We were trying to figure out what we were going to do and going to classes and such. Not many of my friends knew where we were going to live."

Now that the worst seems past him, Francis says that "the rest of the week was pretty normal, but weird because I wasn't living at home."

But there were still a few uncertainties. Robert Maguire, the owner of 145 South St., told Francis that he would be able to move back Sunday. But the house was not ready to be inhabited again until today, Francis said.

Balch said that while she was told that nine of the students would be moving home Sunday, the University was able to house them as long as necessary. Other students who need emergency housing will still be accommodated, Balch said, even if the students displaced by the fire remain on campus longer than expected.

"I think that people will probably be gone by [this] week. We also have a few spaces in [the] Charles River [Apartments] if folks need that," she said.