A room in my dorm caught fire...

A room in my dorm caught fire...

Oh, and it happens to be the room directly above mine

I knew I was hearing funny sounds...first some weird hissing noise, and then a beeping noise...but I told myself it was my computer and my head playing tricks on me.

Then the fire alarm goes off, I take the emergency stairs thinking it's just another idiot screwing aroung with his smoke alarm (this is seriously the fourth alarm this semester) and I get outside and smoke is pouring out of one of the rooms, along with tons of water. Then I look one story down and see my room. The hissing sound was the sprinkler system activating and the beeping was the guy's smoke alarm.

The guy was probably smoking something he shouldn't have, because the window was open and you're not allowed to open those. The only people who do open them are people smoking things. I don't remember very well but at the beginning or some point halfway he put a fan to the window to blow the smoke out.

Fortunately the fire didn't spread to my room, and fortunately the water didn't fry my PC, but the water DID leak down: a big spot in my shower (there's a big panel in the roof there, and it went out through a crack between the celing and that panel; it came from under the sink, and there's a large lake that encompasses most of the tiled section of my room (I've cleaned about half up), we don't know how it got there cause there's no visible leak but I think the water fell between the walls and seeped out at the edge between the floor and the wall; there's also a leak in the ceiling where the ceiling and wall meet, and that dripped on my roommate's bed. The moment I got in the room I pulled his bed away and set up a trash container to collect the water. There's also a leak developing (hasn't dropped water yet) over my bed but it looks like it may not leak anything (moved my bed and set up another trash container just in case).

I'm just glad the fire didn't come down, and that there is very limited water damage...

what a dumbass. if he was smoking in the dorm he should know to open the windows, setup a good fan, and put a plastic bag or something over the fire alarm. The sprinklers in dorms are very sensitive.

Actually he did have the window open, and he did have a fan too...but something actually caught fire.

We've got a little courtyard/grassy area on that side of the dorm, you could easily fit 4 volleyball lots in there, and the smoke had covered the whole area.

wow dood that sucks but well the good thing is that you're okay man..... and why didn't he just go outside to smoke real quick and come back up??? I mean seriously it's common sense

:yeadat

Believe it or not some idiots actually smoke legal cigarettes in their room...my suitemate does it regularly. You're not allowed to of course, these dorms are freakin tinder boxes waiting to ignite. But there are also those who smoke things they're not allowed to smoke anywhere...

Anyway, you wanted pics, you got them.

The first pic is where the water leaked through the ceiling to my roommate's bed. He changed his sheets - if you saw the color of the water in the trash bin, you would too. Anyway that dark line is the path the water took before finding a hole in the ceiling, it extends about two feet from the wall, so my roommate may not sleep well tonight.



The second is my sink. The door to the right leads to a shared bathroom, and the wall right next to it is where I think the water came (still don't know for sure). Basically almost all the tile visible in the picture was covered by water.



The last one is from my shower, you can see where the water was leaking. It was fast enough to be a continual stream, albeit very thin. That's nothing compared to the drainage path at the fire escape, there was the sound of gushing water for about half an hour (just to give you an idea of how much it is).



That's all I have. I didn't take pics outside because I was too far away for my camera phone, and I was busy calling my parents and letting them know there was the possibility that I was staying home that night.

I had a Java assignment due, and it didn't get done because of this...I had firefighters, policemen, and Residential Life staff running up and down my floor assessing the damage because (other than the 5th floor) we took the most of it. Then again, I could be looking at my melted PC instead of posting, so

well dorms are meant to not allow fire to spread from one to another....... a few years ago one of the dorm rooms on campus where i go caught on fire.... COMPLETELY destroyed the room..... nothing in it was salvageable.... the rooms on either side had a little paint peel & turn yellow, but that was it

^^ if you lived where I lived, you would really doubt that the dorms will contain the fire to individual rooms...my dorm is the ghetto of them all, it's a wonder that anything still works in here.

Well, here's the official news:
http://www.asuwebdevil.com/issues/2005/04/07/news/692785

Yes, a candle started it, sure His window was open and the smoke alarm was covered with a plastic bag.

He's on the 5th floor, I'm on the 4th floor...

well see?? there u go folks don't do green or you'll end up like our friend here lol

I know people who do it in their dorms, but most of my friends who do are in the Towers, which are kinda like apartments and like 3x the size of a normal dormroom. Dont really have to worry about the firealarm or the smell going out into the hallway. Girls nextdoor last year smoked weed regularly in the dorm....they were idiots and the whole floor reeked of it when they were done

Im wondering how this dumbass managed to set his room on fire while smoking.....seems like it'd be pretty hard to do.

A lot of people smoke on my floor. They dislarm the fire alarms when they do it and then put it back together or get a big fan and blow it out the window. We have maintance checks about every month cause of people messing with the fire alarms. We also get a lot of people pulling prank fire alarms too at like 2:30 AM in the morning on a school day. When will people learn?

Drugs are WHACK!