Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect new information.
Students were evacuated from Walker Hall due to maintenance efforts to restore heat to the building.
According to an email sent to Walker Hall residents, Housing and Residence Life were working to repair the heat in Walker Hall the morning of Feb. 13 when an air handler malfunction in the building caused the fire alarms to go off. The residents within the building evacuated immediately and waited for about 30 minutes for maintenance to turn off the alarm.
The email, sent at 1:04 p.m., stated that maintenance cleared the building and the residents are allowed back into the building while maintenance works to repair the air handler. Several students reported smelling smoke in the halls as they evacuated Walker.
Sarah Filek, acting freshman, said the fire alarm went off at around noon. The alarm woke her up, and she was told to go outside, she said.
“I didn’t smell it immediately.” Filek said. “Normally, when the fire alarm goes off, we are like ‘ah, let the fire take me’ because we don’t take it seriously because it just goes off randomly. But this time everyone was in the halls.”
Due to the smell from the air handler malfunctioning, Filek said several students started to spread theories and rumors about why the fire alarms went off, including students thinking it was a gas leak, a fire and a pipe burst.
Mary Cone, strategic communications freshman, said she wasn’t in Walker Hall during the malfunction. She said the information she received during the issue was from her friends in group chats.
“It was a lot of people who lived in Walker making speculations,” Cone said. “It’s just hard to get information, and I thought the faculty was trying to get a plan set before they sent out a lot.”
Filek said a lot of the students went to Alvin’s and the Caf in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center. Filek said she stayed with one of her friends in Banning Hall. Students were then brought back to Walker for a meeting to explain what happened and clear up some misinformation. Filek said her RA asked her if she would be willing to stay in a hotel, though the chances of that happening are unlikely.
“We’re still getting mixed signals as to whether or not we’re going to be put up in hotels. What I’ve been told is that we’re just getting people ready just in case, but we should be good to stay in here,” Filek said. “They told us the heating is back on. I’m still cold, but I’m just a cold natured person so that’s probably just me.”F
Some students also reported flooding in the basement of Walker Hall. The flooding was a result a line in the fire suppression system in the basement being disrupted by a low temperatures.
Caset Kreger, director of Housing and Residence Life, said most of the flooding was maintained within the maintenance room in the basement of Walker Hall, with some of the water flowing out into the rest of the basement. Kreger said maintenance ran tests of the area that was flooded to see of it would cause future damage, all of which came back negative.
Kreger said Housing and Residence Life prepared as much as they could to withstand the record lows, but the buildings were not buildings were not built to hold up against such constant cold weather.
“We were prepared for this,” Kreger said. “But many of the structures here are not created to run at negative temps, if that makes sense. It’s not something normal we usually get. Your structures are built, your heating systems are built, your water systems are built to operate until–normally operating for a long time–usually somewhere in the single digits, but that’s usually lot for long periods of time.”
Kreger said student should report any maintenance issue to Housing and Residence Life if they see one. The best to contact housing is through the RA, Kreger said.
More updates on Walker Hall maintenance issues to come soon.
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