15 p.m. After nearly a two hour wait, students were allowed to reenter D.H. Hill at 8
Students who evacuated D.H. Hill Library Wednesday sought shelter from the cold by sitting inside Harrelson Hall while waiting to be allowed back into the library after the fire alarm sounded at approximately 6
People in D.H. Hill Library got an unwelcome interruption Wednesday evening.
A fire alarm went off between 6:15 p.m. and 6:20 p.m., according to students at the library at the time. Another alarm went off at 8:17 p.m., according to a Campus Police representative.
According to the Campus Police representative, the 8:17 p.m. alarm was unable to be immediately cut off because there was an issue with the panel. Electronics representatives were called in to fix the panel. Employees were allowed in at 8:25 p.m., and students followed suit, reentering D.H. Hill en masse.
Chris Rhodes, a sophomore in chemical engineering and a library employee, was working at the library when the alarm went off.
“The alarm went off, people just kind of awkwardly looked around, finally people started to slowly file out,” Rhodes said. “[Employees] got outside pretty quickly, but there was some congestion outside because people were out on the balcony.”
However, student Keegan Beckwith, a senior in business administration, said he heard there was a small fire in the West Wing of D.H. Hill Library. Beckwith was waiting outside the West Wing.
“There was a small fire in the west wing. Someone told me it happened about 6. We’ve been waiting here about two hours,” Beckwith said.
Karis Robertson, a junior in accounting, said she talked to a librarian about what happened.
“I tried to talk to one of the librarians, they think it might have been it a malfunction due to atrium construction. That’s just a guess,” said Robertson.
Kirsten Figaro, a junior in psychology, said she got to the library about 7:40 p.m. and was still waiting to get in at 8 p.m.
“We heard someone pulled the fire alarm. There was a fire truck here, but it left just a few minutes ago. Apparently they can’t figure out how to turn the alarm off. So far, we’ve been waiting about 20 minutes to get in,” Figaro said.
Jake Strickland, a freshman in civil engineering, said he was surprised at how long it took everyone to evacuate the library.
“It happened at 6:15. I heard that it took about 20 minutes to evacuate. The fire department came about the same time. People were still coming down from the ninthfloor. I was on the first floor,” said Strickland.
Emily Wiseman, a freshman in political science, said she was upset that it took so long to get everyone out of the library.
“What makes me mad is that State doesn’t have a better evacuation plan. We took a while to get out. Something bad could have happened, because we couldn’t find the exits,” said Wiseman.
Students such as Victoria Clarke, a freshman in elementary education, were upset with how long it took for everyone to be let back in the library.
“It shouldn’t take two hours to find a small fire,” Clarke said.
William Stevenson, the University fire marshal, said Campus Police handled the fire alarm situation, but University Fire Protection would be following up by investigating what happened.
“We’ll do a follow-up and write a report on the fire protection side of what happened tonight,” Stevenson said.
Staff Writer Lee Daniello contributed to this report.