Posted: 09/05/07

Blaze at the fort
Window frame ignites, but alarms stay silent at Ethan Allen

Katie Colleran | staff editor
kcolleran@smcvt.edu

As a firefighter, Daniels saw a fire and instinctively went to help. (Alex McIntire, photo)

Driving to work is a daily routine for Michael Daniels, a state employee from Vergennes. But, on Monday morning, Aug. 27, he noticed an unusual haze near the entrance of Fort Ethan Allen. Intrigued by the white color of the smoke, he kept his eye on it.

Getting closer, the 38-year veteran of the Vergennes Fire Department realized there was a fire in Ethan Allen Apartment 102 and took action.

“Seeing a fire wakes you up, surprises you, no matter how long you’ve done it,” Daniels says. “I flipped my truck’s lights and alarm on, went in and started knocking on doors, and dialed 911 as I was evacuating students. Then I got a fire extinguisher and hit the fire from the porch side of the building.”

The fire may have woken Daniels up, but not the students inside. The fire did not set off the smoke alarms in the building to alert the students to the danger, but Daniels drove by just in time to rouse them.  

Surprise wake-up call

Senior Rachael Warner, of 102 A, had her alarm set for 7:30 a.m., but it was another noise that woke her around 6:30.

“I heard what I thought was a car alarm, so I looked out my window,” Warner says. “And there was a guy there yelling, ‘The structure’s on fire! Get out of the building!’"

Warner listened to Daniels and, waking her roommate, headed outside and shouted through windows to warn other students, she says.

Upstairs, the noise from Daniels’ truck had also woken sophomore Michael Maloney. Maloney was closer to the fire than Warner and his first reaction was to grab the fire extinguisher.

“I opened my front door and just started hitting the fire and then this guy [Daniels] runs up the stairs with another [extinguisher],” Maloney says. “He just started chanting me on.”

Maloney and Daniels went through two small fire extinguishers before heading outside to join the rest of the students. Everyone was kept out of the building for little more than an hour, Warner says.

Senior Trevor Ashe was one of the firefighters that responded to the call for the St. Michael’s fire department. The Colchester and Winooski departments also responded, which is standard procedure for a structure fire on campus, he says.

“We got on scene and there was light smoke coming from the rear of the building, second story, where there’s the attached porch,” Ashe says. “Our crew advanced a line to the second floor and put it out pretty quick. Then they did an overall to make sure it was all out.”

The fire had almost hit the roof when Daniels arrived. (Alex McIntire, photo)

The cause of the fire has been deemed accidental, says Peter Soons, director of safety and security at St. Michael's.

“No one has come forward to say ‘I left a cigarette on the window’, but that’s the prevailing theory,” Soons says. “In the end, the fire was relatively small and it burned basically the windowsill, the side, the top of the window and it was just starting to reach the structure.”

Though Maloney says he had a stack of cardboard in the stairwell, none of that caught fire. Nothing under the window was involved. However, if there had been fuel such as cardboard involved it could have been more serious, Soons says.

“We’re lucky in a lot of ways with this one because it was discovered early,” he says. “Had this happened at 3 o’clock in the morning, there’s a good chance it could have been much more involved.”

Alarm Bells

The smoke detectors were all in working order, the smoke just did not get close enough to activate them, Soons says. Because students had their back doors closed, the smoke was contained in the stairwell.

“Every residence room on campus has a smoke detector, as well as common areas,” he says. “The smoke alarms did not go off because there was no smoke introduced to those areas.”

According to Warner, the closest smoke alarm to the stairwell in her apartment is down the hall, and there is not one in her common area. Maloney, who has the same situation in his apartment, says he is surprised there is no alarm in the stairwell because it is made entirely of wood.

The cardboard, though piled near the site of the fire, did not ignite. (Alex McIntire, photo)

Though each dorm room has a detector, not all the rooms are connected to the campus dispatch system. If the detectors had gone off, but the students had failed to call the fire in, dispatch would not have known there was a problem. Only multiple occupancy buildings and larger structures, like the library, are connected to the fire alarm system, and a call is sent to dispatch when an alarm in them activates, Soons says.

“In the townhouses, because of occupancy, they don’t have building alarms,” he says. “The Ethan Allen apartments, like the townhouses, have local alarms as they are considered apartments and not residence halls.”

This information is usually shared in area meetings with students, Soons says.

In compliance with building codes, a local alarm will only alert the residents to a fire; it is then their responsibility to get out and call 911,
Soons says. The residents are also provided with fire extinguishers.

Warner and Maloney both say they were not informed of these procedures and are surprised no one ever mentioned it.

“I honestly wouldn’t have thought to call 911,” Warner says.

Fire Safety on Campus

In order to prevent fires from occurring, there are certain precautions students can take, Soons says.

“Tips are be wise, don’t overload electrical sources,” he says. “We do have a ban on campus for candles and incense, but that is unfortunately violated.”

In a recent article from Firehouse.com on the increasing number of campus fires, most fires are blamed on cramming electrical equipment into dorm rooms, but the most fatalities are blamed on unattended candles, Soons shares.

“Fire safety is something we take very seriously on campus,” he says. “All the residence halls, all the places that have multiple occupancies, have sprinkler systems and we even have our own fire department on campus.”

As a member of the department, Ashe offers advice that comes from first-hand knowledge.

“Just be smart about things,” he says. “Don’t smoke in the buildings, make sure there are no pinched wires next to heating elements. If anybody has any questions about what is a fire hazard, they can call anyone on the fire department. We’d be happy to take a look for them.”