Kirkland Students Left Homeless After Alarm

Residents of the Kirkland House Annex were barred from their rooms in freezing temperatures Friday night following a false fire alarm.

The alarm was set off when someone “intentionally and maliciously discharged a fire extinguisher” in L entryway, according to Deputy Fire Chief Francis Murphy of the Cambridge Fire Department.

The alarm was activated at 1:23 a.m. and firefighters left Kirkland at 2:13 a.m. after determining the cause of the alarm, Murphy said.

According to Kirkland residents, Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) prevented students from all of the Annex’s six entryways from re-entering their rooms after the fire department left.

Murphy said that the police stopped students from accessing their rooms because of the powder given off by the chemical extinguisher.

This was the second time in a week that students have been left homeless for a night due to improper use of a fire extinguisher—a nearly identical incident took place next door in Eliot’s D entryway the previous Saturday.

Some residents expressed anger at the decision of the police, claiming that their extension of the ban beyond L entryway was retribution for the recent spate of false alarms.

Paul B. Davis ’07, a resident of J entryway in the Annex, wrote on the Kirkland e-mail list that the actions of the police were a “childish and unprofessional effort at collective punishment.” He added that he “resented being told by an unprofessional officer last night that I shared responsibility for my punishment.”

L-entryway resident Raymond A. Jean ’08 disagreed.

Jean said that by about 4:00 a.m., he and his roommates were informed that they were allowed back in their rooms, and wrote to the Kirkland list that it was “very courteous of them to even stay around that late, let alone tell people they could re-enter.”

Jean said that if the students had known they were going to be allowed back in at 4:00 a.m., then “it wouldn’t have been that big a deal.”

HUPD representatives could not be reached for comment yesterday.