Shaw Hall fire leaves two injured

By: Stephanie Musat

Posted: 4/11/08

A fire in Shaw Hall resulted in two injuries and minor damage to seven rooms early Thursday morning.

The fire started in a junior's second-floor room because her clothes were hanging too close to an incandescent light bulb, said Lt. Joe Galloway of the Syracuse Fire Department.

The clothes caught fire and triggered the building's alarm system at approximately 3:40 a.m.

The junior was taken to an ambulance on a gurney and treated for minor burns. One other person sustained a minor burn to the finger, said John Day, a Department of Public Safety officer.

The fire caused minor damage to the room. Six other rooms on the floor had water damage from the sprinklers, Galloway said.

One sprinkler head discharges 15 to 20 gallons of water per minute. It can cost several hundred dollars to replace and do thousands of dollars of damage, according to the DPS Web site.

Items are not supposed to be hung on the ceiling or on the walls within two feet of the ceiling, lighting fixtures or covering electrical outlets, according to the Web site.

The building's 451 residents were evacuated when the alarm went off, said Cpl. Kim Isaac from DPS.

Two fire trucks responded as students waited outside on Comstock Avenue. Firefighters were seen pushing water with brooms out of a first floor door and into the Shaw parking lot on the north side of the building.

The students remained outside for an hour before returning inside.

A second alarm went off at approximately 6 a.m., and residents on the second and third floor were told to gather their belongings and leave. Students were allowed to return into the building fewer than five minutes later.

Stacey Berman, an undecided freshman in the College of Visual and Performing Arts who lives on the second floor, said when the first alarm went off, she and her roommate grabbed their coats and sneakers and evacuated the building, thinking that it was a routine fire drill.

"We didn't know what was going on," she said. "We didn't find out any information. We were standing out there for a really long time, and I was petrified to go back in."

When the second alarm sounded, Berman said she was told to gather her belongings and leave because the floor was flooded.

Marisa Novak, an undecided freshman in the College of Human Ecology who lives on the third floor in Shaw, said she, too, thought that it was a false alarm at first.

"I was really surprised and a little scared when I first heard the alarm," she said. "I was sound asleep. It was startling."

She evacuated the building and waited outside, thinking that the residents would be let in soon after the alarm originally sounded.

"Nobody told us what was going on, so we were standing outside with no information," she said. "I thought it was a false alarm

- photo editor Stephen Dockery and asst. feature editor Erinn Connor contributed reporting.

sdmusat@syr.edu