Around 7:15 a.m. on Oct. 16, the fire alarm in Wightman Residence Hall went off. This alarming noise forced all residents to evacuate the building well before many were expecting to get out of bed.
Students rushed out their doors to evacuate the building unsure of the potential dangers.
“The (resident assistant) on-call was notified by Campus Safety of the facility issue after the fire alarm had caused the evacuation of the building,” Ivins said. “The RA was informed that Campus Safety notified residents on the second floor about there may be a temporary water outage to repair the pump. The RA completed an incident report.”
Caramia Axland ‘25, resident assistant on the third floor of Wightman, was on the scene when the alarm sounded. They went to talk to campus safety to discuss the issue, where they discovered that there was an issue in the engine room of the building, causing issues with the water pump.
“(Campus safety and facilities) then told me that the water for the second floor would be shut off,” Axland said.
According to Axland, it was just the second floor that lost water that morning. “Their residents were largely unaffected.”
“As far as I know, none of my residents lost water, just sleep,” Axland said.
According to Axland, there were some residents that were in the shower when the alarm sounded, forcing residents out into the cold morning air.
“It was terrible,” Axland said. “I felt so bad that I told them to go stand in the Lesesne doorway so that they would be out of the cold, if only for a minute or two.”
Residents were allowed to reenter Wightman roughly 15 minutes after the alarm sounded.
Bill Littlefield, director of facilities, stated that the building lost water pressure momentarily. When the water started back up again, the fire alarm automatically sounded.
“The fire pump caused the issue in the building,” Littlefield said. “We are not sure why the pump started up. We have had this checked out, and what we believe is that there was a momentary loss of water pressure and it started.”
An investigation from the facilities department stated that there were no leaks found in the building.
“We believe that this was a blip in water pressure to the building,” Littlefield said. “Once the pump started, the system did what it was supposed to; it turned the fire alarm on in the building for evacuation, called the fire (department) and alerted facilities.”
Contradictory to what was stated by the Residence Life staff, the director of facilities stated that the building never lost water and that water was never shut off.
“At no time did we lose water to the building,” Littlefield said. “The pump did pump water to the outside of the building, but we did not turn the water off in the building.”
The lack of clear communication between the residence life staff, facilities and residents of Wightman is incredibly concerning. Across the board, there are reasons to doubt the efficacy of these offices working together to solve future issues.
