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Alarms Fail as Fire Rips Through Rust College Dorm Rooms

By Daarel Burnette II
Black College Wire

Photo credit: The Rustorian Smoke and water damage destroyed six rooms at E.W. Rust dormitory for freshman women.

About 160 freshman girls barely escaped their dorm rooms March 15 during an early-morning fire at Rust College that suspiciously failed to set off alarms, while destroying six rooms and causing significant damage to the building.

No one was seriously harmed, but the blaze angered many parents, students and fire officials, who question the small private college's fire-safety practices.

Fire officials in Holly Springs, Miss., and residents of the E. L. Rust dormitory for freshman women said the fire alarm did not ring during the 3:45 a.m. blaze, which started in a second-floor unit. College officials initially denied that the alarm failed to work.

Students, some in pajamas and bare feet, raced through smoky hallways banging on doors to wake their neighbors and flee to safety. One student suffered smoke inhalation, but was not seriously harmed, said assistant fire chief Kenny Hallbrook of the Holly Springs fire department.

College officials have relocated the 160 residents to other campus residence halls, and say they expect to renovate the E.L. Rust dorm by July.

The total cost of the damage was not known.

Several students lost all their possessions and have scrambled to find clothing and other necessities.

Fire officials said the blaze started in a room on the east wing of the brick building, where a student had burned an incense stick and forgotten to extinguish it before falling asleep.

�It appears that a student stuck an incense stick in the door, which ignited the door,� Hallbrook said. The fire spread from the door through the unit.

The fire ripped through six dormitory rooms, causing �significant damage,� including smoke and water injury, Hallbrook said.

�There were fire alarms installed,� Hallbrook said. �Why they didn�t work, I can�t say. We addressed [administrators] with it, though, and they told us they were working on that problem.�

College officials said they could not explain what happened during the fire. Some initially denied that the alarm failed or said they did not know.

�I don�t know if the fire alarms didn�t go off,� Robert Curry, the college�s director of facilities, said when reached by telephone at his college office. �I can�t say that they didn�t go off.�

Ed Comeau, director of the nonprofit national Center for Campus Fire Safety, said that dormitory fire alarms should be fully tested once a year.

Since the fire, the college has undertaken inspections of all its fire alarm systems, including the system in the E.L. Rust dormitory, Ishmell Edwards, the college�s vice president, said. �Right now, the residence halls, the classroom buildings, all of the [alarm] systems are being checked out.�

Asked whether the burning of incense was forbidden in the dormitories, Edwards said it was college policy �that dormitories are smoke-free areas, so that doesn�t leave any leeway for matches.�

As to whether the students responsible for using the incense would face disciplinary action, he said, �Right now, we are trying to assess the entire incident, so we�re not looking at that.�

Photo credit: The Rustorian Some students said most of their possessions were destroyed.

In early January, Fisk University students returning from Christmas break were displaced from their dorm rooms after a fire that also was caused by a burning incense stick, according to reports in Nashville.

Several local news reports said unnamed firefighters suggested that Rust uses its status as a private college to resist following safety codes and practices that would be mandatory at public institutions.

Vice President Edwards called this allegation unfounded.

�We try and follow the codes,� he said.

Curry, the director of facilities, said, �I don�t know what the codes are. We do the best we can with the resources we have.�

Comeau, of the Center for Campus Fire Safety, said that every building that serves the public has some obligation to follow local fire codes.

�They have a responsibility to provide a safe place to live,� he said.

Dormitory residents who fled the smoke and flames described a lack of information or preparation, and a lot of confusion about fire evacuation procedures.

Immediately after the fire, for example, some students claimed the building�s emergency exits were locked. However, firefighters checked and determined they were working, but said the students might not have known how to use them, according to a report in the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

And although Edwards said each dormitory conducts a fire drill once a semester, several residents of the E. L. Rust dorm said they had never participated in one.

�We�ve talked about having a fire drill, but it never happened,� said Tosha Braxton, a sophomore computer science major from Newport, Ark., and a resident assistant in the E.L. Rust dorm, on the east side of the building on the first floor.

Braxton said she is a member of a dormitory safety committee that organizes a safety program and planned to hold a dorm-wide meeting later in March to address fire and other hazards.

She said she was sleeping when the fire started, and the commotion awakened her.

�I heard girls running upstairs, so I came up to see what was going on,� Braxton said. �They were telling me there was a fire, but I couldn�t smell anything and there were no fire alarms.� She went outside with the other girls and watched as the fire department arrived. She did a roll call for her hallway, she said, to make sure all students were accounted for.

Comeau said that colleges should conduct fire drills once a semester.

Photo credit: The Rustorian Students wait at Emma Elzy Hall for room assignments. The 160 residents have all been relocated to other campus residence halls.

�The more frequently a school conducts fire drills, the more the students remember,� he said, adding that colleges have rapid turnover rates.

Fire drills are also a good way to test the fire alarm systems, Comeau said.

Reached in Chicago, Karen Horst, the parent of a Rust College freshman, said her daughter called on a cell phone as firefighters fought the blaze, and she could hear someone doing a head count.

�They were calling out girls� names, trying to locate them,� Horst said. She asked her daughter whether her name had been called. Her daughter said no, she had not heard it.

Horst was upset, she said, because nobody had awakened her daughter during the fire. The noise of other fleeing students woke her daughter, who made her way outside.

�My daughter was never accounted for,� Horst said. �That�s endangerment of her life.�

It could have been much worse if students had not knocked on each other�s doors and screamed to wake each other up, witnesses and fire officials said.

�I�ve lost everything,� said JoAnn Cooper, a pre-med biology major from Chicago. She said most of her possessions were destroyed when the ceiling collapsed in her dorm room. Her room, number 111, was almost directly below the source of the fire. �Most of my stuff has a lot of water damage,� including a television and computer, she said. A church deacon brought her a toothbrush and toothpaste and other essential items the first night, and a church elder gave her some money.

Days later, the few belongings she was able to retrieve, including clothes and an asthma machine, had smoke and water damage. She said the university provided her with a $20 stipend to wash clothes, but the smoke smell was still in them.

�I�ve smelled like a grill for the past couple days,� she said.

She was sleeping when students knocking on the door awakened her and urged her to get out. She said she did not hear any alarm. Once outside, Cooper, who has asthma, had trouble breathing.

�I was breathing in a lot of smoke; it was burning really hard in my lungs,� she said. �There was so much chaos, so I sat down on a curb and tried to chill for a while.�

Edwards said all students moving into the dorms are offered an option to purchase a renter�s protection plan. In some cases, students� belongings are covered under their parents� homeowners� policies.

Cooper said she opted not to buy the renter�s insurance. �I just didn�t do it,� she said. She was frustrated, however, because she said the college could do more to help her and the other students who lost nearly everything but the pajamas they escaped in. �I know they don�t have to pay for all of that, but they could at least give me some money for some clothes,� she said.

Daarel Burnette II is a student at Hampton University.

Posted March 21, 2005