“I had this fever of death that weekend,” first-year Katie Byrum said. “I should not have been outside that morning. It was so cold.”
At approximately 3 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 16, the third floor fire alarm sounded near the D-suites, forcing Bryan Hall to evacuate. In Bryan the fire alarm system is localized, reading suites individually instead of by floor, as with most of the residence halls. Usually, only one suite’s alarm goes off, but last Sunday the entire building’s fire safety detection device was broken.
“The alarm was going off so much because someone broke the pull station in Bryan Hall, possibly a student,” said Reginald Hayes, Director of Public Safety.
“Some people tried to disconnect their own smoke detectors,” said Joe Vereen, Assistant Dean of Campus Life. These students thought they could prevent further alarms from being set off, but in reality it caused more alarms, since the system relies on individual smoke detectors to report a fire.
Other violations occurred that weekend as well; some students failed to evacuate Bryan after several alarms. “They will be charged with a judicial violation, said Dean of Campus Life Anne Lundquist. “This is important, as had there been an actual fire, they could have been in danger.”
“Our emergency response procedure is any time an alarm is pulled or a possible fire is in the residence hall, students are to evacuate the building,” Hayes said. “This did not happen [that morning] and I’m concerned that students are not taking these incidents seriously.”
According to Jillian McCartney of the Salisbury Post, last year at Catawba College the fire alarms went off three times in one night; during the last alarm there was an actual fire. One student failed to evacuate and was burned to death. Guilford policy mandates a complete evacuation to avoid a similar tragedy.
“Failing to evacuate during a fire alarm is a violation of the Guilford student conduct code and also North Carolina state law. We will engage the judicial process as outlined in the handbook with those students [who failed to evacuate],” Lundquist said.