Seton Hall fire survivor shares stories of struggles, advocacy

The morning of Jan. 19, 2000 — just before dawn — Alvaro Llanos put on a jacket as he scrambled out of his room for what he thought was a fire drill. Little did he know that jacket would be ablaze a few minutes later. Llanos and his freshman roommate Shawn Simons were two of the four critically injured victims of the Seton Hall University fire in Boland Residence Hall’s third floor. 

The fire, which started as a drunken prank between two Seton Hall students, claimed the lives of three and injured more than 50. The Daily Targum interviewed Simons, who will speak tonight at Rutgers University Programming Association’s event “After The Fire: A True Story of Friendship and Survival” at the College Avenue Student Center.

The Daily Targum: What do you currently do?

Shawn Simons: I am a motivational speaker. I speak about fire safety and prevention across the country.

DT: What is the significance of your visit to Rutgers?

SS: The significance of our presentation at Rutgers is to raise awareness about dangers of fire on college campuses across the country. It obviously goes back to arson by two fellow students at Seton Hall University in South Orange in 2000. For this being national campus safety month, it is important to know that these dangers do exist and to educate them on the fire safety so nothing like this happens again.

DT: What is the first thought that comes to your mind when you think of the fire?

SS: The first thought is, of course, that I wish that it didn’t happen. No one wanted to have to lose their classmates or their children. We didn’t want to have to go through the painful burn injuries that we did and the mental aspect of accepting our scars and being comfortable in our own skin.

But apart from that, I think it happened for a pretty good cause. Laws changed because of our fire. It became mandatory for all residence halls across New Jersey to have fire sprinklers. Big schools like Rutgers stepped up their game in terms of fire safety because as the largest university in the state — they didn’t want anything of that magnitude to happen to its students. So, you [must] take the good from the bad. It caused a lot of damage to us, but at the same time it protected millions of students across the country.

DT: Can you describe everything you remember from the morning of Jan. 19, 2000?

SS: I was 17 then. It was the second semester, and we had just come back from winter break. The prior semester, we had had numerous false alarms. Students would just pull the fire alarm, sometimes two or three times over the course of the week. So the night of the actual fire, people became complacent. [Alvaro and I] took our time …

We went out the hallway, and we saw a big cloud of black smoke. Unfortunately, we didn’t know where the fire was, and instead of going to the stairwell, we went toward the elevator and ended up crawling right into the fire.

DT: What was your first reaction? What did you feel?

SS: It was incredibly hot, and it kept getting hotter and hotter. I actually never saw the fire, the smoke was so blinding.

DT: What was the effect of the fire on your body?

SS: I suffered burn injuries on 16 percent of my body. I suffered first and second degree burns on my face and third degree burns on both my hands. I almost lost four of my fingers because of the severity of the burns. My roommate Alvaro, however, crawled into the lounge where the fire started. As he tried to go down the stairwell, the ceiling fell on his back, and his jacket caught on fire. He suffered burns on 56 percent of his body, from his head to torso.

DT: How long were you in the fire, and how long did recovery take?

SS: From leaving my room to getting out of the fire, it probably took less than five to six minutes, but in a fire it feels like it’s taking forever. When I got out, I had no idea to the extent to which I was burned because I was in shock. It wasn’t until I went across into the cafeteria, and someone said I needed medical attention.

I was in a medically induced coma for three weeks after the fire. Overall, I was in the hospital for a month and a half and had therapy every single day for seven to eight months.

DT: Would you say you’re still recovering from the fire in any way?

SS: No, no. Everything has healed, even mentally and emotionally, which is really unusual for burn survivors. You don’t look the way you used to. We live in a superficial world where people judge you on the way you look, but we learned to love our burned skin, embrace it and use it as a tool to teach other people what it is like to be a burn survivor.

DT: Did the fire bring you closer to Alvaro?

SS: … It’s almost like we are going to be life-long roommates because we are driving around the country and sharing our message through Guido Verweyen’s documentary, “After the Fire: A True Story of Heroes & Cowards.”

DT: Why is it called a true story of heroes and cowards?

SS: The heroes are not only Alvaro and I and the relationship and friendship we have, but the number of people who helped us get through this, the amazing burn unit at Saint Barnabas Hospital, the investigative team who worked diligently. The cowards are the two young men who set the fire, and how they tried to manipulate the investigators for many years and the antics they did to bypass the situation.

DT: What changed when you returned to Seton Hall?

SS: The atmosphere was one of those things where people who were at the fire never forgot and always kept it in the back of their minds. A huge bell tower was constructed that had names of the three students who died, and it rang every 15 minutes. There was another memorial in front of Boland Hall, so students could never forget. It’s something I am proud of. The documentary is shown to incoming freshmen to reiterate to them the sacrifices that were made to protect them.

DT: If you could have done one thing differently back then, what would it be?

SS: That night, I would have made that left instead of the right. I would have used the fire drills to educate myself on the various ways I could have escaped.

DT: What message do you like to give to college students?

SS: I tell students know your number, know the number from your door to both the exits on your hallway. … The message I love to give students is that the reason for us putting our story out there isn’t to scare anyone — it’s to educate. There is an important reason why fire safety exists on college campuses and why administrators really push students to do certain things and not do certain things. Our story is a walking and living example of a disaster that has happened on a college campus.