On Monday night, Jan. 13, an electrical fire started in the Rivers Hall laundry room at approximately 12:30 a.m. No injuries occurred and the fire was contained to the laundry room.
Residents of Rivers Hall and the neighboring hall, Rice Hall, evacuated after fire alarms went off. These residents were later moved to the Student Recreational Center to avoid smoke and to wait while the Florence Fire Department extinguished the fire.
“We couldn’t go back inside for a while, I eventually went to Olive (Hall) to stay,” says Haley Hubbard, a freshman resident of Rice Hall. Some students, like Hubbard, resorted to staying the night in other campus dormitories with friends.
As of right now, students are having to use friends in other dorms or outside methods to do laundry until the fire damage can be repaired.
In an email sent out by UNA Student Affairs the following morning, they said, “The safety and well-being of our campus community is our top priority and we will continue to support the impacted residents”. No further comments were able to be obtained.
While the specific cause of this fire has not been put out, it is important to understand how fires like this one could possibly occur.
Some of the biggest causes of laundry room fires are lint build up and overfilling of washers and dryers. When the lint from dryers is not often cleared out, the lint blocks airflow from the dryer. This causes the dryer to overheat and eventually a fire can break out. Lint traps and filters should be checked before and after every use to prevent blockages.
Laundry room machines should also be regularly checked by dormitory maintenance to ensure equipment is running as it should.
