The Berkshire Apartments building was evacuated around 6:30 p.m. Thursday, after a small oven fire on the first floor flooded the building with smoke.
The all-clear from the D.C. Fire Department to return inside the building was given around 7:30 p.m. An AU Alert was tweeted and emailed to some students around 7 p.m. The message said to avoid the area around the building.
Cullen Moran, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences who lives on the second floor of the apartments’ east tower, said the lobby was full of smoke as he left. Other students also walked through the haze.
“I left my apartment and I could smell smoke,” said Leah Gellineau, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences who lives on the fifth floor of the central tower. “When I entered the stairwell it was filled with smoke and two girls were running down the stairs coughing … I could barely see going down the stairs cause of all the smoke.”
The fire department was clearing the smoke out of the lobby by 7:00 p.m.
Eagle staff writer Jennifer Reyes contributed to this report.
