Issue date: 10/2/07 Section: Exclusively Online

Media Credit: Kris O'Brien Director of Housing Jill Eckardt says that sprinklers didn't release water into any rooms -- just a public area on the first floor, after a fire in HPT.

Strobing fire alarm lights flashed in the windows of the empty dorms, while fire trucks sat on the north side of the Heritage Park Towers - a few hundred students were distributed outside of the building, some waiting to get back to studying and some in their pajamas.

There was a fire in the north tower of the Heritage Park Towers at approximately 11 p.m. in a plastic dumpster in the trash shoot on the first floor. A little less than 600 students stood outside waiting until they were given the all clear and let back in at 11:55 p.m.

"I was in the shower and I heard the alarm that saying 'there was a fire in the building,'" sophomore education major Vanessa Vela says. "I thought, 'I need to get dressed now.'"

Director of Housing Jill Eckardt explains there was a trash shoot fire and it "basically appears to be an accident," citing someone may have thrown a cigarette butt or something they were unaware was burning. She also explains it could have been any of the floors in the north tower. Eckardt notes, "The fire systems work and the sprinklers came on."

"There is a sense it was an accident," Eckardt says. She also says there will be "An investigation with university police and the fire department."

At 11:55 p.m. when students hurried back in their dorms, there was water in a public area in the middle of the first floor but no rooms were damaged, and students like Kristen Vegas, freshman commercial music major, who lives on the first floor, were left with only a "putrid" smell of burnt plastic and garbage.

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