Fire in Wendell kitchen extinguished by student after smoke filled building

A Wendell Hall kitchen was ablaze on Saturday night after someone left a pan on the stove, according to Yao Xiao ’28. He put out the fire with a fire extinguisher after smelling smoke in his room shortly after 8 p.m. 

Smoke filled the second-floor kitchen and the north side of the building, Xiao told The Daily Princetonian. Cabinets above the stove had caught fire, and black smoke spilled out through the kitchen window. About 20 minutes later, firefighters arrived at the scene in at least five fire trucks, quickly setting up fans in the building to clear the smoke.

“I went to go look inside the kitchen to see … if someone just burned something in the microwave, and I noticed there was a huge flame on the stovetop,” Xiao said.

Xiao, who lives directly next to the kitchen, took a fire extinguisher from the hallway and put out the fire. “The smoke was getting really bad, and it was getting hard to see,” he said.

While in the kitchen, firefighters appeared to tear a hole in the ceiling and look inside the cabinets above the stove, breaking off the cabinet doors. 

Tharuka Hikkaduwa Gamage ’26, a residential college adviser, lives directly above the kitchen where the fire broke out. She was told by Public Safety officers on the scene that firefighters removed her door in order to enter her room and disperse the smoke.

Gamage was unaware whether the hole in the kitchen ceiling made a hole in her room’s floor, but officers told her she would not be able to sleep in her room that night. 

At 8:40 p.m., firefighters cleared the area of the fans, which had dispersed much of the smoke. At 9:30 p.m., after assessing the damage, firefighters told the crowd of students they could return to their dorms, but to inform PSafe if they smelled smoke. 

Multiple PSafe officers and firefighters declined to comment. 

Steven Messiah ’28 alerted PSafe to the fire. “Whitman has had like five fire drills this year, so I just walked out thinking it was a drill,” he told the ‘Prince.’ 

“Even the PSafe officer sounded surprised on the phone,” Messiah said. “He was like, ‘A real fire?’”

Over an hour after the blaze was put out, a firefighter asked the crowd of students who was responsible for the fire. 

Several students told the firefighter that the student had left the area. 

“I would too,” the firefighter responded. 

Several videos of the fire were quickly posted to the anonymous Princeton social media platform Fizz, garnering hundreds of upvotes. 

Nico David-Fox is a head News editor for the ‘Prince.’ He is from Washington, D.C. and often covers breaking news. He can be reached at ndf[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

Editor’s note: The headline for this article was updated after publication for clarity.