Christmas tree blamed for dorm fire at Drake

A Drake University dorm was evacuated because of a fire this morning, but the blaze was confined to one room where officials say a Christmas tree caught on fire. Drake University spokesperson Lisa Lacher says the fire was not in a student’s room. The student lounge was on the second floor of Moorhead Hall, a dorm on the Drake campus. About 145 students live in the dorm, and about 40 were still there at 9:30 this morning and were evacuated while fire fighters knocked the blaze down. The lounge and a couple of nearby student rooms were damaged to the tune of about four thousand dollars. By the way, the Christmas tree was fake, not real.