Smoke from a brush fire forced an evacuation of the Riverhead Building for about 30 minutes Tuesday afternoon.
After a fire alarm went off at around 12:30 p.m, students, faculty and staff flooded into Veterans Plaza until about 12:55 p.m, according to Public Safety and witnesses.
The fire “began by the loading dock and was contained to that area the whole time,” a Public Safety official said. The Selden Fire department responded to the incident. A request for comment was not immediately returned.
“I saw a girl run down the hall saying, ‘Fire!,” and then a crowd gathered yelling the same thing, said Gia Zehner, an early childhood education major who was in her math class in the Riverhead Building at the time of the evacuation.
Elizabeth Dart, assistant academic chair of the math department, was helping to keep people from going back into the building while the evacuation was in place and letting “Public Safety do their thing.”
Some were skeptical that there was a fire. One student at first thought the smoke was the result of someone vaping.
Josh Palmeri, who works in web services on the third floor of the Riverhead Building, said his colleagues responded to seeing the smoke by getting fire extinguishers to help douse the blaze. He said he thought Public Safety did a good job at containing the situation.
John Rovere, a 29-year-old computer science major from Middle Island, agreed.
“I was really surprised with how quick either campus security or the local PD or fire department arrived on scene,” he said. “I mean, alarms must have rang and within six, seven minutes, they were on campus, like, already dealing with the issue, so. It’s very good to see that response time out of everybody involved.”
