Students evacuate Linden Hall after apartment fire

Students+evacuate+Linden+Hall+after+apartment+fire

AMHERST — About 75 residents in Linden Hall were evacuated at approximately 9 p.m. Wednesday night when a small fire broke out in an apartment. There were no injuries or damages to the apartment, according to UMass Spokesman Ed Blaguszewski.

The fire started on the second floor when Kayla Rorke and her roommates were trying to heat up cookies in a toaster oven. When the toaster oven caught on fire, Rorke and her roommates extinguished the fire with a dry chemical extinguisher.

“The Linden residents were evacuated for about 45 minutes,” Blaguszewski said. Linden Hall is a multi-year dorm building located in the Commonwealth Honors College Residential Community.

“My roommates and I just came out [of the room], and there was a lot of smoke in the hallway,” said Kachi Onyenokwe, an RA on the second floor of Linden.

Sarah Georges, a Linden resident who lives down the hall from Rorke, said, “I wasn’t afraid, I was just concerned. When I saw the smoke, I was like, that’s kind of bad.”

The Amherst Fire Department, the UMass Police Department and the Environmental Health and Safety department arrived at the scene, but the fire had already been extinguished. There was some cleanup to do from the dry chemical extinguisher, according to Blaguszewski. The fire department also had to vent the hallway and reset the fire alarm system, he said.

When asked about the aftermath, Rorke said with a laugh, “We had to throw the toaster oven out.”

Email Nicole at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter @Nicole_DeFeudis 

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