Fire alarms went off in the Donna Garff Marriott Honors Residential Scholars Community on Sunday, Nov. 3 late at night.
The alarms first sounded on the second floor in the south wing at around 11:15 p.m. and the building was evacuated.
“The students were cooking and burned some food and the smoke went into the hallway and set off the alarm,” said Aria Irani, the resident advisor of the floor that set off the alarm and a senior in business operations and management.
The Salt Lake City Fire Department confirmed Irani’s account of the incident.
“Our crews responded to a general fire alarm called in at 11:14 last night,” said Jasen Asay, the spokesman for the Salt Lake City Fire Department. “It was just smoke from burnt food, no actual flames.”
Irani said that incidents like this are very uncommon and that they are usually avoided by teaching students how to live safely.
“We keep our students safe. At the beginning of the year we tell them all the safety precautions. Luckily it wasn’t anything big,” Irani said.
While incidents like this are rare at the U, Asay says that burning food often sets off fire alarms in Salt Lake.
“These types of incidents aren’t something we see every day or every week. But we generally respond to things of this nature about once a month, so they’re somewhat common,” Asay said.
Many students in the dorm building thought that the alarms were just a fire drill.
“At first we thought it was just a fire drill but when we realized it wasn’t we were really confused. Most people were sleeping or in some other state of disarray. Most of us weren’t prepared to be outside in the cold for that long,” said Stephanie VanBeuge, a freshman in biology.
According to VanBeuge, students were let back into the building at around 11:45 p.m.
Portia Anderson, the coordinator for the Honors Residential Community, could not be reached for comment.