The Fire Alarm At Bischoff

February 7, 2019 Tyler Barth Entertainment 0

By TYLER BARTH

About 300 students were forced out into the bitter cold on Jan. 31 after the fire alarms blared at the Bischoff Hall.

Many students, woken up from the alarm, which went off at 6:02 a.m., had groggily grabbed whatever the nearest clothing article had been. For some, those articles were shorts and tee-shirts.Temperatures at the time of the evacuation were measured to be about -2° degrees, or -15° taking the wind chill into account.

An unnamed student’s response to the alarm. PHOTO/Tyler Barth

After a few minutes of standing in the bitter cold, students were directed into Mackin until the building was cleared. Students were permitted back into the dorms to carry on with their morning, be it by falling back to sleep or getting ready for their day. Somewhat understandably, student response was a little icy.

“Whoever decided to have a fire drill in -15° weather, ya mom’s a hamster,” wrote one student, who asked not to be named, on his dorm room’s whiteboard. He specified that this was a reference to a quip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but that it summarized his thoughts on the event “perfectly”.

According to Scott Sample, a psychology major and the Resident Advisor of Bischoff Hall’s fourth floor, the alarm was not a drill. The bitter cold had tripped an alarm sensor, triggering the fire alarm.

According to Thoughtco.com, it is not rare for a smoke detector’s performance to be compromised in the bitter cold. Cold temperatures inhibit the circuit within the batteries, and, under conditions, this can lead to the alarm being triggered when there is no apparent issue.

“It’s pretty common the alarms go off at night. Most of the time it’s the microwave, popcorn, stuff like that, but I think this time it went off in the stairwell.”, said Jenn Hyland, a nursing major and the Resident Advisor of the fifth floor at Bischoff. “A lot of people get the drills confused with the real thing, we tell them, but they don’t listen.”

According to Hyland, the college requires that fire drills be done twice a semester per building. As such, Resident Advisors usually attempt to defer drills until later into the semester during the day, when temperatures are warmer and some students are away at classes.