Residents forced to vacate 21-floor residence for around two hours while firefighters worked
At 1:47 a.m. on Friday morning, Thompson residents were evacuated due to a fire in the tenth-floor common washroom. At least five fire trucks and about a dozen other vehicles, including police cars and campus security, were on the scene a short time later.
In a Twitter post, Ottawa Fire Services said firefighters arrived on scene two minutes after a fire alarm alert was received. “[T]hey were met with heavy black smoke coming from the men’s washroom and a “working fire.” OFS’s post also said the fire was under control by 1:57 a.m., eight minutes after firefighters arrived on scene.
At 2:55 a.m., the last three fire trucks were being packed up. A campus protection officer then confirmed to the Fulcrum the fire was “under control,” and everyone had been evacuated.
A Reddit user claimed the fire caused some floors to be smoky, and that it began when someone dropped a cigarette or joint into the bathroom garbage.
Jaime Saúl, a first-year political science student and Thompson resident, told the Fulcrum residents were allowed back into the building between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. and described the tenth-floor washroom as a “total loss”.
Ricky Landry, the chief communications officer at the U of O, said that most residents had re-entered the building, “except for those who lived in six rooms who will need to be temporarily relocated.” Landry added that “Student Affairs is providing [those students] with the logistical and emotional support they need.”
The fire comes in the second week of the university’s final exams. “For displaced students that wish to defer their exam, we will work with them and their respective faculties to see what is possible,” Landry said.
