East River Hall Students Frustrated with False Fire Alarms

Residential students in East River Hall have been frustrated this fall with a number of false fire alarms. Whether from residents putting aluminum foil in the microwave or burning hair with a hair tool, the false fire alarms have become a regular occurrence.

Aurora Haywood, a freshman who lives in East River Hall, said the false fire alarms don’t necessarily have an effect on her, but they are inconvenient. She applauded the Residence Life sand Campus Safety staff for doing “a good job” during the fire alarms.

Katie McDaniel, director of Residence Life, spoke about the process of responding to fire alarms.

“We handle all fire alarms, whether they are false alarms, fire drills, or a legit fire, the same way,” McDaniel said. “Get everyone out of the building and to a safe location.”

McDaniel also said that preventing false fire alarms is a hard task to accomplish.

“There could be a multitude of reasons that there is a false alarm,” McDaineil said. “It could be someone made something with just the slightest amount of smoke, and by the time that everyone is outside, the smoke has cleared, and it could be considered false. There could be a wire crossed somewhere in that actual box that is treating it like a fire drill. Either way, we take all times the fire alarm goes off very seriously.”

Currently, there are no consequences for a “false” fire alarm unless the Residence Life staff knows that someone specifically pulled the fire alarm, which would result in a meeting with McDaniel and Chris Johnson, dean of students.

Kendell Britt, a resident assistant (RA) in East River Hall, said that Residence Life and Campus Safety have been working together very closely to prevent any fire dangers by responding quickly.

“The alarms are mainly coming from students either having banned items, such as open flames or leaving other heating electronic appliances on,” Britt said. “I ask that we, as university students, make sure that we unplug or double check your items that are heat appliances after usage to ensure no fires break out.”