JACOB KONST/Arizona Daily Wildcat Kaibab residents, including undeclared freshman Shawn Lewis, were forced to evacuate the residence hall when a fire erupted in a student's first-story room Friday night. Lewis, who was showering when the alarm went off, waited with other residents outside for more than an hour and a half.

Unattended candle causes smoke damage, student evacuation

A small fire caused by a candle in Kaibab-Huachuca Residence Hall, 922 E. Fourth St., left dozens of residents standing outside in the street for an hour and a half Friday night.

John Ouellet, a resident assistant who oversees the hall in which the fire started, said the room sustained a lot of smoke damage, but much of the resident's personal property went untouched.

Ouellet, a sociology junior, said a lot of the smoke damage could be fixed by just cleaning the walls.

Although Ouellet was not present when the fire broke out, he said the resident had been in and out of the room since Friday night.

Ouellet said the residence hall will have a hearing to determine a course of discipline for the resident. He said burning a candle in a room is prohibited, but there is ambiguity about the specific punishment.

Some students said they heard the fire alarms shortly before 6 p.m. and exited the residence hall immediately, leaving behind jackets, wallets, or for one student, clothing.

Shawn Lewis, an undeclared freshman, was in the shower when he heard alarms and only was able to throw on a towel before leaving his room.

Resident assistants warned students they would be fined if they do not exit the building immediately when sirens go off, no matter what they are doing, Lewis said.

Lewis said test evacuations are done all of the time, and he thought they would only be outside for a few minutes.

However, the fire alarm was ringing due to a real emergency, but Lewis said he did not mind being outside without clothes.

"It's better to be in a towel than dying (in a fire)," he said.

Lewis said no one offered to go inside and retrieve clothing for him, even after the fire was extinguished.

Robin Kalinski, a pre-nursing junior, said she did not know the alarms were sounding because of a real fire and otherwise would have grabbed her car keys and wallet.

Kalinski was wearing shorts in the low, 60-degree weather.

"It's freezing out here," she said. "It really sucks."

Eshawn Petereson, a biology freshman, said she was disappointed with the lack of communication between the RAs and the students who were forced out of their rooms.

Petereson said every so often an RA would tell students it would only take another 15 minutes before they could return to their rooms, but the entire cleanup took an hour and a half.

"It doesn't take that much time to put out a candle," she said.