A fire in Anderson Hall early Saturday morning damaged a bulletin board but left no substantial damage to the building, and no injuries were reported as a result of the incident, according to student witnesses and Public Safety Chief Michael McNair.
The fire started in a trash can below the menu board behind the mailboxes, McNair said in an e-mail. The fire then spread to the menu board.
A student in the residence hall saw the fire and reported it to the front desk at 4:30 a.m., who then alerted Public Safety, McNair said.
Nick Jonczak, a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences, was one of two people besides the front desk staff in the lobby of Anderson during the fire, he said. Jonczak saw a woman telling the front desk about white smoke. The front desk indicated that Public Safety had been called and that "[they] didn't really know what to do," he said.
Jonczak decided to see what was going on, he said in an online interview.
"One of the little wooden menu/flier holders was smoldering," he said. "The plastic part had melted away considerably, and the paper behind it was smoldering, too. There wasn't an open fire anymore that I could see."
There was a fair amount of smoke in the area, Jonczak said.
"I could definitely still see through it, but it still irritated my eyes," he said.
Jonczak said he thought he could take the board outside and stomp the fire out, but as he was determining how to take the board out of the building, six Public Safety officers responded and he left.
While officers were responding to the fire, they pulled the fire alarm, worked with resident assistants and resident directors to evacuate people from the building and contacted the D.C. Fire Department, McNair said.
DCFD responded with three engines. Although the fire was fully out before it arrived, DCFD personnel made sure the fire was completely out before they would allow people to re-enter the building.
A chief in the Tenleytown firehouse, contacted by phone, was not authorized to talk on the record, and the public information office was closed for the weekend.
The evacuation was for the most part orderly, said Lisa Espinosa, a sophomore in the School of International Service.
However, those exiting through the lobby saw smoke and began to run, said Sheri Villa, a senior in CAS.
Jonczak said he thought the evacuation took an "awful long time." He said he noticed that some people exiting came out coughing and rubbing their eyes.
During the evacuation, students were sent to Mary Graydon Center and had to stay there while the DCFD set up exhaust fans to remove smoke from the building and make sure the fire was out.
There was never a threat to the entire building, and the fire was contained.
The exact cause of the fire was not known at press time. However, the cause of the fire is currently under investigation, McNair said.
