Fire prompts evacuation of Dod Hall

Roughly 35 people were evacuated when a smoke alarm was triggered around 5:50 p.m. by a fire in a trash can. The fire started after a student who had been smoking outside the building dumped cigarette ashes that had not been fully extinguished into a garbage can in his room, 200 Dod.

“By the time [Public Safety] responded, [another] student had already put the fire out, and because of the smoke alarm, the building was evacuated,” University spokeswoman Emily Aronson said. “Everyone was let back in around 6:30 p.m.”

No one was injured, and the fire was contained within the garbage can, Assistant Chief William Mooney of the Princeton Fire Department said.

“There was some smoke in the building,” Mooney explained. “We pushed the smoke out with some fans, and that was the extent of it.”

He added that roughly 25 people total from the Princeton Fire Department and the Princeton First Aid & Rescue Squad responded to the call.

“With a dormitory building, it’s a very high risk,” he said. “There’s a large number of people that may be in the building. We held it to the units here. We had more coming, and we could’ve called more in from other towns if we needed them.”

Hilana Lewkowitz-Shpuntoff ’10, who was napping when the fire occurred in the room across the hall from her, said she felt the emergency response to the incident was excessive.

“The guy’s room across the hall from me — there was a lot of smoke coming out of it ... and he was coming back from a shower, and it was really funny,” Lewkowitz-Shpuntoff said. “And there was a fire extinguisher involved. That was it. Not a big deal.”

The smoke alarm went off after the fire had been extinguished, she said.

Aronson noted that Public Safety, the University fire marshal and the municipal fire department were all present at the scene.

“Public Safety dispatched the fire department,” Aronson said. “Any time there’s a confirmed fire outside or in a building, the fire department is dispatched to the scene.”