BLOOMSBURG, Pa. - A fire destroyed a fraternity house near Bloomsburg University early yesterday, killing three people who officials say they believe were students.

As of last night, the Columbia County coroner had not identified the bodies recovered from the Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE) house on East Fourth Street in this east-central Pennsylvania college town. The coroner is waiting for dental records, officials said.

"They're relatively sure that they know" the identities, Sgt. Leo Sokoloski said last night. "But they aren't going to release those names."

Six males were in the home at the time of the fire, Bloomsburg Police Chief Larry Smith said yesterday at a news conference at the university.

One resident escaped through a second-floor window, and the other two may have gotten out through the front door, he said. The cause of the fire was not known last night.

Yesterday's was the second major fraternity-house blaze at the 7,500-student university in almost 51/2 years. In 1994, a morning fire at the Beta Sigma Delta house killed five students, prompting Bloomsburg town and university officials to form a task force to draft safety recommendations for students living off campus.

University officials are expected to meet with students at 11 a.m. todayto share information about the latest fire, university president Jessica Kozloff said. Counselors and clergy will be available for students who need support, she added.

"We're waiting for that time, because we simply don't have that much information right now," she said. "If what we fear is true, and we have lost members of our university community, then that meeting will be doubly important."

The parents of the three fraternity-house residents who had not been accounted for are in Bloomsburg awaiting word about their children, said Kozloff. The coroner's office could be able to identify the bodies as early as today, she said.

"Now, of course, our first, immediate concern is for our students and for the families that are here awaiting news," she said. "[It's] certainly the most difficult thing any parent can go through."

The Bloomsburg Police Department received an emergency call about the fire at 6:05 a.m., and officials arrived in less than a minute to find the fraternity house engulfed in flames, Sokoloski said.

He said the home burned to the ground, collapsing into the basement, forcing officials to use heavy equipment to sift through the remains of the two-story structure.

"By the way that the fire burned and how fast it burned and how hot it burned, it's going to make it difficult for our investigators and the fire marshals to determine the origin of the fire," Sokoloski said.

Smith said there had been a gathering at the fraternity house the night before, and some were still awake at 3:30 a.m., when there were six people in the house.

Claude Renninger, 67, a resident of nearby Locust Street, said he and his son got dressed about 6:15 a.m. and hurried to Fourth Street, where his daughter lives, because he was concerned that the fire might be at her house.

The TKE house was "completely engulfed in flames," he said. "There wasn't water going on when we got down there."

He estimated that firefighters stopped pumping water into the home about 11 a.m.

The fire caused extensive damage to a townhouse near the fraternity home, but no injuries were reported, police said.

TKE is an 18-member fraternity. The TKE house had 12 code violations when the Bloomsburg Code Enforcement Office inspected it in October 1999. Among them, it had an electrical system that could not support five portable electric heaters; the fire extinguisher had been discharged; and a smoke detector was not working, according to Dean Von Blohn, Bloomsburg's code-enforcement officer.

However, all violations had been addressed as of January, he said.

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