The Legacy of Renden Lemasters

continued

In the aftermath, the fire department asked city council to forbid upholstered furniture on porches. But student activists vigorously opposed the "couch ban," and the issue was tabled, apparently indefinitely.

Almost six years later, in the early morning of April 3, 2010, a trash container caught fire on the porch of a house on South State. The fire spread to a nearby couch and then to the house itself. This time, two people were injured--and twenty-two-year-old EMU student Renden Lemasters died.

Fire Marshal Kathleen Chamberlain arrived at the fire with the first responders. "It brought the fear we all had to the surface," says Chamberlain, "and let us see the very real consequences of what can happen when upholstered furniture catches fire. They provide tremendous amounts of fuel and generate tremendous amounts of heat very, very quickly."

Afterward, council again took up the couch ban. This time, the fire marshal enlisted the Lemasters family to the cause.

"Kathleen Chamberlain came to me a week after the fire and told me they needed help to get it through," remembers Kim Lemasters, Renden's mother. "We went to council meetings and spoke through the summer and into the early fall."