The temperature drop was not the only problem Richmond students had to worry about this weekend. During the forecasted high 20s of last Sunday, students in Boatwright Memorial Library and Jeter Hall had to wait outside because of three fire alarms.
Junior Zhang Tianyuan was one of what she estimates 100 students left out in the cold on Sunday when the fire alarm went off at the library.
Zhang was doing her homework when the fire signal sounded at 11:58 a.m. She waited in the Tyler Haynes Commons for about 20 minutes before she followed the students that began to head back to the library, she said.
Assistant Chief of Police Beth Simonds said a burnt belt in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning equipment triggered the library’s fire alarm.
When officers arrived at the fire signal, they contacted university facilities personnel because they detected “a slight smoky smell” in the library.
Students in the library were not alone. Residents of Jeter experienced two fire alarms on Sunday, both of which were not fire drills.
The first alarm sounded at 12:52 p.m. and was caused by a large amount of steam from the shower area of a dorm room. Senior Maria Eugenia Fernandez, the resident assistant for the basement floor of Jeter, estimates that the alarm lasted for 10 minutes.
In the afternoon, Zhang said she had started to feel a cold developing and went back to her room at Jeter to take a nap. But after she fell asleep the second fire alarm at Jeter went off at 4:25 p.m. and she had to go outside again.
Junior Liu Zihao, a resident of Jeter, was there for both the alarms that went off at Jeter. He estimates the second one lasted at least 10 minutes. Liu waited outside but could not bear the cold and so he went to wait at Dennis Hall.
Simonds said the cause of Jeter’s second alarm was unknown.
The fire alarm in Jeter went off three times last week, but Simonds did not consider that to be a high frequency as the one on Thursday, Feb. 9 was a fire drill.
Contact reporter Tina Liu at tina.liu@richmond.edu.
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