Fire alarms triggered by external power failure cause many buildings to be evacuated temporarily
Vanessa DelCarpio
Contributor
On Wednesday, September 19, York’s Keele Campus was struck by two blackouts that impacted a number of areas both on and off campus.
While they didn’t last long, several high-use areas were hit by the two power outages, including Curtis Lecture Halls, Accolade West, the Student Centre, Central Square, Vari Hall, York Lanes, and Scott Library. Other affected areas included the Harry Sherman Crowe apartments, Atkinson, Passy Garden, and Assiniboine residences, says Richard Francki, assistant vp Campus Services and Business Operations.
The first blackout lasted from 12:24 p.m. to 12:47 p.m., and the second blackout began at 5:00 p.m., lasting about five minutes.
The two blackouts coincided with fire alarms going off in the Student Centre, and Toronto Fire Services were called to the scene.
Reetika Aggarwal, a first-year science student who was at the Student Centre during the first blackout, says the sudden interruption was confusing.
“When I got there, there was a group playing drums…but after a few minutes the lights went off, and nobody really understood why until the fire alarm started ringing, and at that point, none of the cash registers were working, so the security [guards] started evacuating everybody out of the building and stopped [the vendors] from serving food,” says Aggarwal.
Captain Adrian Ratushniak of Toronto Fire Services says upon investigation of the first blackout, the fire department found that, due to an electrical power failure off campus, the exhaust fans in the cafeteria area were unable to remove cooking odours, which then activated the smoke detector. Several alarms were activated due to smoke migration in the area.
Ken Wong, manager of building code and fire protection, says during the second blackout, the smoke detectors were triggered again by exhaust fans that failed because of the power loss, setting off the fire alarm for a second time, and prompting Toronto Fire Services to return.
Wong says the smoke detector has since been replaced, because even though it wasn’t defective, it is York’s standard practice to change smoke detectors once they have been activated twice.
No incidents were reported as a result of the blackouts or fire alarms.
