Groggy and confused students filed out of Western Run Hall 20 minutes after midnight on Friday, Sept. 12, as a fire alarm blared, inciting chatter and speculation.
The fire alarm was triggered by a sprinkler that was set off on the second floor in the room of second-year Matthew Floyd. Although there was no evidence of a fire, the water from the sprinkler damaged Floyd’s television set and leaked beneath the surrounding floorboards into the ceiling of first floor dormitories as well.
“They had a dry-cleaning company come over the next day to collect some of the stuff. I got all my stuff back now, except for the TV – broken,” Floyd said.
At 12:30 a.m., after the students were evacuated, Residence Life and Housing staff called them to a meeting in Rockland Center.
“One of the ResLife coordinators told us that we would need to find someplace to sleep because we couldn’t return to our building, so they just assumed everyone had a place to sleep that night,” second-year James Joynes said.
Displaced residents of Western Run Hall who had nowhere to go were forced to sleep in the Rockland banquet hall.
While most residents returned to their rooms, which were left undamaged, some students were relocated to unoccupied rooms in other residence halls such as Susquehanna and Patapsco. Other affected students, including Joynes, were transferred to Hilton Garden Inn, 1.9 miles away from campus.
“I stayed at the hotel my whole duration of the weekend. The hotel was nice; it [was] just the fact that I had to get my own food, because I couldn’t get anything to eat from the hotel the day I moved in. Saturday is when [Stevenson] decided to step in,” Joynes said.
All but six temporarily displaced students were cleared to return to their dormitories this past Tuesday.
While Western Run Hall residents experienced a long and taxing weekend, ResLife has been working to avoid such incidents and maintain a safe and comfortable environment for on-campus residents.
“We thank our students for their cooperation during the evacuation and the temporary moves. Likewise, we are grateful to our Campus Safety and Facilities staff as well as the Baltimore County Fire Department for their response to the incident,” Director of Residence Life and Housing Bradley Donovan wrote in an email. “In these instances, the safety of our resident students and an abundance of caution are always first.”
