Adams Loses Sleep Over False Fire Alarms

Smoke in the Adams House student kitchen triggered two false fire alarms Friday and Saturday, bringing to 12 the number of unwarranted Adams evacuations this fall.

The frequent alarms—which have plagued the house since the first week of the semester—followed the installation of a more sensitive fire detection system over the summer.

Adams House Master Sean Palfrey said the House can’t change the sensitivity of the entire alarm system in one fell swoop. The myriad detectors throughout the common areas and student rooms have to be individually moved or adjusted if problems arise, he said.

“I don’t think we’ve probably moved very far to fix the system,” Palfrey said.

Palfrey said that two new fans have been installed in the student kitchen over the past two years and he will look into installing another.

“I don’t want the solution to be that we can’t use the kitchen,” Palfrey said.

Merle Bicknell, assistant director of physical resources in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said in September that the triggers for this year’s alarms have included burning toast, system malfunctions and even a sink that overflowed onto a smoke detector.

To residents’ dismay, many of the alarms have sounded at the time when most students are in the building—between midnight and breakfast.

Following the 2:45 a.m. alarm last Friday morning, Adams resident Rohit Chopra ’04 sent a scathing e-mail to the House open list.

Chopra, the Undergraduate Council president, chastised both students who didn’t evacuate and the school administration that has allowed the false alarms to continue.

“If this system is oversensitive, it needs to be fixed immediately, since people are starting to ignore it—that’s a problem,” Chopra wrote.

Chopra warned that the alarms created a situation similar to that at Seton Hall University four years ago, where three students died in a dorm fire after 18 false alarms the previous semester.

During the second Adams false alarm this weekend, at 9:45 p.m. on Saturday, Melissa D. Chittle ’06 said she—but not her roommates—went downstairs.

“I was the token roommate to go down and check that it wasn’t actually a fire,” Chittle said. “It’s the biggest boy-who-cried-wolf syndrome ever...I didn’t see anyone downstairs.”

Andrew J. Miller ’04 and Katie A. Giblin ’06 said that they evacuate each time the alarm sounds—but for different reasons.

“It’s sort of an inconvenience, but I like living,” Miller explained.

“It’s kind of a novelty because you get to see people in their bathrobes,” Giblin added. “It’s kind of voyeuristic and fun.”

Before leaving his room at the sound of each alarm, Jeremy N. King ’04 said that he makes sure to entertain the rest of his entryway.

“We have bay windows facing the street, so we put good music on and throw open the windows first,” King said. “We did get various looks from fire officials.”

And he identified at least one key benefit of the forced late-night excursions.

“You find out who everyone’s hooking up with,” King said.