While West Quad residents have had to deal with the annoyance of a spat of false fire alarms recently, the residence hall was evacuated for a reason last night. But that reason was not a fire, officials say.
Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Diane Brown told The Michigan Daily late last night the evacuation of West Quad was due to a sprinkler head being set off — not a fire.
While the exact cause of the sprinkler discharge was not known as of 2 a.m. last night, Brown said it was likely due to a sports-related activity in the hallway where the sprinkler head was broken. Brown stressed the incident was not the result of any system malfunction.
Residents were allowed to return to their rooms last night, but those living in the affected hallway were not being let back into their rooms.
Brown said officials on the scene were making accommodations for students who would not be able to return to their rooms for the night.
“Housing and DPS will be working to determine if any of the residents might need alternative housing tonight,” she said.
Brown said it was too early to tell how much water damage there would be in the affected hall or to the hall below it, but said more would be known once the area had been cleaned up and the damage could be more fully assessed.
LSA sophomore Jason Zweig said he was in his room reading when he heard the fire alarm go off.
“My RA came out and he said it was going to be a little longer, because this one he said is real,” Zwwig said.
Because of a recent slew of false alarms at West Quad, Zweig said he thought this was just another false alarm, and added he didn’t smell smoke in the dorm.
“I honestly thought it was a drill because that’s the way it’s been the past few times,” Zweig said. “I think somebody’s been pulling the fire alarm — but I’m not sure.”
Since Feb. 1, West Quad has experienced three false fire alarms.
LSA freshman Brad Kowalk said he was starting to get annoyed by the number of false alarms in recent weeks. He added that last week West Quad resident advisors told students they were looking into possible leads behind whoever had been pulling the alarms.
Kowalk expressed concern that his fellow West Quad residents have stopped taking the recent onslaught of alarms seriously.
“The more times people pull the fire alarms, the less people come out because they keep crying wolf,” he said.
— Daily News Editor Kyle Swanson contributed to this report.