Students on one unlucky residence floor were trapped behind locked doors during a false fire alarm in the Lennox and Addington building Sept. 5, trying desperately to get out while claiming they received little communication from university safety.
The alarm hit the building at 12:48 a.m., and during the evacuation, locks on the doors of the eighth floor failed, locking the students in. The fire escape doors, meant to automatically unlock during a fire alarm, locked instead.
Approximately 18 students were trapped on the floor for ten minutes before safety officers could open the doors, according to a letter released by director of university safety Allan Burns.
Students on the floor, however, claim the situation was not dealt with properly by university safety, and said there was and continues to be a serious lack of communication between the affected students and university authorities.
“I did my best to attempt to communicate with the university and the department of safety but there was no communication and our best efforts to find out what was happening were not properly met,” said eighth-floor resident Joel Tallerico, who was one of the students trapped inside.
Tallerico is also vice-president (administration) of the Rideau River Residence Association which issued a press release Sept. 5 slamming the university’s response and calling for an inquiry.
“We need a full and open review of University Safety communications. This should never happen again,” the press release said.
When the alarms began ringing, Tallerico said he and his fellow residents left their rooms immediately and went toward the exits.
When they found they could not open the doors, Tallerico went back into his room and called university safety, who told him officers were on their way.
University safety officers reached the doors shortly after the alarms, but while students could see the officers, they could not hear them and were still locked inside.
“So that point was when panic started to set in even more on the floor and students were becoming overly distressed,” Tallerico said.
“There was no communication and we just had no idea what was going on,” said Caleb Hans, a third-year public affairs and policy management student who lives on the floor. “We weren’t sure if this was just a drill or if it was a real fire. No one knew what was going on.”
“A lot of people were pretty scared,” he said.
Following this, safety officers managed to open the doors, and directed students to leave through the fire escape. However, according to Tallerico, no further direction was given, and at this point the students were not told the fire alarm had been false.
“For me this was very traumatic,” Tallerico said. “Waking up at 12:48 in the morning and believing you’re in a situation where you’re supposed to be exiting a building and it’s life or death, and having the doors on either side locked is very, very traumatic.”
The day following the incident, Burns addressed the floor to explain what had happened. Counselling services were offered to students, but his apology did not satisfy all students.
“He didn’t really address the lack of communication,” Hans said. “I would’ve liked to have heard more of an apology and more discussion of this lack of communication. A lot of us were scared, and we were not even notified of the situation.”
“He was there to offer an apology for the mechanical failure of the mechanisms in the building, but that’s not enough, that’s not enough for our students,” Tallerico said.
Tallerico said he would like a review of the incident along with a full apology for the “lack of communication” and “the fear and emotional trauma” that was felt by students on the floor.
The letter from Allan Burns, posted on the university’s website, said an “investigation” is underway to find out why the locking mechanisms failed.
The letter said the building’s alarm systems are tested every month, and in numerous past tests over the past year, the automatic unlocking systems have never failed. The doors have been repaired following the incident.
The letter also states someone deliberately activated an alarm at a pull station.
“A possible suspect has been identified and criminal charges may be laid,” Burns wrote.
Burns wrote that making the campus safer was a “shared responsibility” and that all false alarms would always be treated as “real emergency events.”
Burns could not be reached for further comment at the time of publication.
