Last week, on Friday, Sept. 18, an alarm sounded in the Barone Campus Center at approximately noon, causing the evacuation of students, faculty and staff from the building.
Shortly thereafter, the Department of Public Safety and the Fairfield Fire Department responded to the alarm.
Those evacuated from the building were readmitted into the BCC after about 30 minutes.
According to Assistant Director of DPS John Ritchie, the incident was caused by a false alarm, not a fire alarm as many had thought.
“It was not a fire alarm, which is a scheduled test of the fire detection system and evacuation procedures. What we had in the BCC today was a false alarm. There was no visible cause for the activation of a duct detector in the dining room,” Ritchie said.
“We called our service provider to double check the system to ensure all is working well,” he continued.
Ritchie went on to say that false alarms are actually a common occurrence. “Many false alarms are actually caused by dust, insects, etc. We simply determined there was no smoke or fire present and therefore call it a false alarm.”
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