A fire engulfed a Village C East room early Tuesday morning, leaving the room blackened and hundreds of evacuated residents standing outside for hours in the night. The fire was quickly extinguished but has raised questions among some students about Georgetown’s ability to adequately respond to campus emergencies.
D.C. Fire Department Public Affairs Officer Alan Etter said that the cause of the fire, which took place in Room 872, was a candle that had been left burning on a desk.
George White (CAS ‘05) spotted the flames from a friend’s window and pulled the building fire alarm.
“I opened the door and the room was packed with black, hot, rancid smoke, which bellowed out as soon as I opened the door,” he said. “I couldn’t see a thing. I ducked down and yelled repeatedly to see if anyone was in the room, there was no response, and then a Department of Public Safety officer arrived on the scene and cleared the floor.”
At 2:37a.m. Etter said, Fire Department Engine 5 responded to a 911 call and observed flames jetting from a VCE window.
Firefighters entered the building and punched out several hall windows as they raised ladders to battle the flames. The fire took only 10 to 15 minutes to put out, according to Etter.
DPS officers led an initial evacuation of both VCE and Village C West dormitories, and held back a large crowd of onlookers and stranded residents. VCW residents were allowed back inside their rooms by around 4:00 a.m., Vice President for Safety and Security David Morrell said, but VCE residents were initially directed to go to the ICC and Leavey Center.
VCE residents were initially redirected to go to ICC, which was locked. DPS then temporarily redirected the students to the lobby and lounges of VCW.
VCE residents who live below the eighth floor were allowed back into their rooms by 4:30 a.m. While the eighth floor remained closed through Tuesday afternoon, Morrell said that only two residents required alternate housing in Darnall Hall for the night. Other students elected to stay with friends.
Brendan McGurke (CAS ‘07), who placed a 911 call at 2:31 a.m., said that he saw the flames and tried to alert disbelieving students to the emergency.
“People were looking out the windows and I started yelling at them to stop looking out the windows and get out of the building,” he said.
Despite the seemingly disorganized evacuation, Morrell said that he was happy with the response to the emergency.
“I think that the response by ResLife, DPS and emergency services was exactly what you would expect in a situation like that,” he said. “If anything,” he added, “Tuesday morning’s evacuation demonstrated the need for increased frequency of fire drills.”
Thomas Nasvytis (SFS ‘06), who lives adjacent to the burned room said that he awoke to the smell of burning plastic and a barely audible alarm that turned off and then back on after several minutes.
“I didn’t even know it was a fire alarm at first,” he said, “it makes me a little nervous the way it happened.”
Morrell said that the Village C East’s smoke alarms and building alarm had deployed as expected after White pulled the building’s fire alarm. Village C East is not equipped with a building sprinkler system.
John Brongenberg, the Consumer Affairs Manager at Underwriters Laboratory, a non-profit consumer safety research center, said that dorm fires caused by unattended candles are on the rise.
“The statistics show that there are about 1500 fires in campus residences every year,” he said. “66 students have died in fires since 2002.”
