A blaze caused by a mechanical failure on an elevator forced residents of South Campus Commons 1 to evacuate Friday morning.
Though South Campus Commons officials, in a statement on their website, called it a “small” fire caused by a lit cigarette, the Prince George’s County Fire Department pegged damages at $10,000 and said cigarettes had nothing to do with it. Yesterday, damages were visible on the building’s fifth floor near the elevator, where tiles were missing from the ceiling and molding was ripped from the walls.
Prince George’s County Fire Department Spokesman Mark Brady said the building’s sprinkler system put out the fire, which he speculated could have been caused by the elevator’s motor overheating, before firefighters arrived. The fire started on the roof of the building. The alarm went off about 10:30 a.m. Friday, he said.
Minutes later, Commons residents milled around their building in the Friday morning sun, some still in their pajamas. They were stuck outside for about two hours, Brady said, while firefighters determined the cause of the blaze and the building was cleaned up.
“This could not be any more inconvenient,” complained senior Maya Jackson, a French and theatre major. Jackson had just begun writing a French paper that was due at 1 p.m. She thought the alarm was a fire drill and expected to be back in her room in 15 minutes.
She didn’t return until 10 minutes before her paper was due – at 12:50 p.m. She said she was embarrassed about e-mailing her professor an excuse instead of a paper.
Dehumidifiers were stationed along the base of the walls and in the apartments with water damage.
“It makes it difficult,” senior Sarah Akkoush, a cell biology and molecular genetics major, said of working in the humid conditions of her apartment caused by the dehumidifiers placed in the middle of her living room floor blocking her walkway. “I want to find things to do elsewhere.”
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