Tag Archives: fire

FEATURED
Furnace Fire at Lotus House Leads to Early Morning Adventures

 

Lotus House is located at 356 Washington Street

It’s 4:15 AM on Sunday morning, that period of time when it’s half super late on Saturday and half super early on Sunday, and the piercing sounds of Lotus House’s fire alarm startle me awake. At first I think this sound is my roommate’s alarm clock, which annoys me, but when the way-too-loud screeching persists for about a minute, I figure I should probably leave the room. I’m still too drowsy to realize that I’m forgetting a jacket, shoes, and my phone – a rookie mistake.

My hallmates and I head down the stairs, and contrary to our quick assumption that somebody was either cooking or smoking, we see a lot of smoke accumulating around the first floor that smells like either some crazy chemical or like somebody’s burning their hair. Anything is possible in Lotus House. We wait outside the house until the fire department comes, at which point we’re all like, Yay they can turn off the alarm and let us back in to sleep! But then after a couple minutes PSafe is basically like, Sike! This is gonna take a while.

It’s freezing outside, so they put us in the workshop-garage-annex-type building next to the house, and we wait for about an hour before conclusively being told that the furnace in the basement caught fire and that it ignited some of the house’s super old insulation, hence that chemically smell. Oh and by the way – it’s leaking carbon monoxide. Gotta love it. “It,” of course, being the act of getting poisoned while you sleep in the residential area you pay thousands of dollars per semester to sleep in. But I digress.

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EVENT
PROMETHEUS FIRE ARTS SHOW (WesFest Edition)

fire circles

Alexis Jimenez ’19 writes in:

Come see Wesleyan’s one and only fire spinning troupe, PROMETHEUS, as we show off our firey moves this Thursday at 7:30 PM on Foss Hill! Seating is very much not limited, so bring your friends, bring your prefrosh, bring your friends’ prefrosh! It should be a fine night, but bring warm clothing just in case.

Date: TONIGHT
Time: 7:30 PM
Where: Foss Hill

EVENT
Prometheus WesFest Show TONIGHT

fire2

From Trevor Dorn-Wallenstein ’15:

Watch us do stupid things with fire!

Prometheus’ 15th annual WesFest show is happening tonight at 9 pm on
Foss Hill. Bring a blanket and a childlike sense of wonder as we do crazy stuff
with fire!

Check out facebook event here.

When: Tonight (April 16) at 9pm
Where: The bottom of Foss Hill
Cost: None, but bring warm clothes/blanket

FEATURED
Wesleyan Way Too Distracted By Oscars To Notice Fire at HiRise

“it’s not like i was prematurely ripped from the womb (my bed) and forced outside practically naked waiting for this kid to put his blunt out”

Some kid threw a lit blunt into a garbage can and set off the HiRise fire alarm, but with the way people are ignoring it you’d think it was the Oscars or something.

According to Luke Wherry ’13, “Some kid thought it would be a good idea to throw away the ember from their hookah into the trash.” Wesleying’s Twitter correspondents (read: @weird_vibes) are on the scene with way more detail about this fire than you can possibly want or need:

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FEATURED
Allbritton Temporarily Shut Down by Gas Leak

“Nobody seemed to care all that much about the smell.”

The Almighty Allbritton, everybody’s favorite robot name of a campus building, has been temporarily triumphed by a gas leak, which Kevin Arritt ’13 noticed around 7 pm. A swarm of firetrucks quickly arrived on the scene, lights flashing, shortly thereafter and evacuated the building. Firetrucks are still speeding down Church Street as of this post, though it’s probably because you don’t know how to use a toaster. According to the Argus’ Facebook page, “QAC tutoring services have been temporarily transferred to PAC Lab.” Espwesso coffee services have been temporarily transferred to your dreams.

Here’s Arritt’s gripping first-person account of the emergency, which he kindly leaked (ugh) to Wesleying:

We were having a meeting in the QAC. Somebody mentioned it smelled strange. When I stepped out into the main QAC area, it definitely did smell like natural gas. The rotten-eggs smell from the additive is pretty distinct.  Somebody called P-Safe and I rolled out, since I assumed the building was about to be cleared out anyway

Everybody was calm and fine. Nobody seemed to care all that much about the smell. Eric Stephen ’13 and Laura Machlin ’13 were two other people who were around.

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Attend a Lecture and Get Your Fire Safety Fine Refunded

Got burned by Fire Safety? The crew made their rounds last week, and if you’re reading this far, you probably got slapped with a $50 fine for having incense in your Fauver triple or whatever. Don’t want to pay it? Have an hour to spare? Wesleying just received this pro-tip from an anonymous source:

I’m sure some poor suckers got slapped with that brutal $100 fine from Fire Safety. But one anonymous RA dropped this
gamechanging news that there is a way to get out of paying it! Please investigate this to see if its true, because if so its the best kept secret on campus! “Anyone who does get written up, they won’t tell you this, but you can get a hundred dollars of your fines refunded if you go to an hour long firesafety seminar (they hold them every other week in USDAN during lunch)…”

So I contacted Fire Safety Coordinator Christine Cruz for clarification. Turns out not only is this the truth, it’s also not really a secret—it appears directly on Fire Safety’s website (though only seems to be applicable for a first offense $50 violation). Here’s the full text of the policy:

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EVENT
Mystery Movie & S’mores Study Break @ ADP

WISHBONE!?!?!?! Charming Yu ’13’s enticing event picture startles you from your pensive pipe puffing and paper pursuing. You put these aside and read on…

It’s a night of mystery at Alpha Delt. Come gather around the fireplace for gooey s’mores and recharge to survive the rest of the week.

P.S. bring your detective hats. This will be the most thrilling study break yet!

Date: Wednesday, Sep. 12th
Time: 8-9pm
Place: Alpha Delta Phi, 185 High Street

“Obnoxious Smell” –> Closed Olin

If you’re on campus and have visited Olin today, you probably saw this sign:

And if you were here an hour or two ago, you may have also seen these trucks:

Yup. 24-hour emergency fire repair and restoration. Apparently (and this is not confirmed, although I did hear it from an Olin employee), the elevator motor burned out overnight and ended up burning oil through most of the night causing small fire that (thankfully) didn’t spread. The building is undamaged and is also safe enough that staff have been entering. This employee also said that Olin intends to reopen tomorrow, which is good because I have a bunch of paper that needs hole punching and the hole puncher in the ground floor of Olin is definitely the most satisfying and consistent hole puncher on campus. Seriously, fuck that one in Sci Li. It sucks.

If you go by Olin, you’ll be able to smell confirmation of the burning oil – earlier today, you could smell it even from the lawn in front of the library; now you have to stand closer to the door. Also, the doors to PAC are propped open to air the place out. Crazy stuff.

Beta-Gate Continues: It’s gettin’ hot in here

“shit just got serious”

– ACB, post 18

In case you’re not in the loop about the whole Beta-gate thing, check out here and here.

Since I last wrote on the issue, new developments have come about. Most notably, FIRE – the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education – has shot off a letter to President Roth, indicating their grave concern about…

…the threat to freedom of association posed by Wesleyan University’s new policy banning students from “participating in social activities” on any property “owned, leased or operated by private societies that are not recognized by the University.”

FIRE,  founded by UPenn history professor Alan Charles Kors and attorney Harvey A. Silverglate, is a non-profit group that seeks to clamp down on university administrations that gravely limit the civil liberties of their students. From a brief flick through their Wikipedia entry (thank gawd for the wikis), they appear to be an outfit who knows what they’re doing. (For evidence, see here and here and here.)

You can check out their views on the case here.

Will their warning bring about a positive outcome? We’ll see. (I sure do hope so, though.)

In other news, it appears some folks are planning something Wesleyan-like to have their voices heard. (For more details, go here.) As one poster very correctly puts it,

This is not a Beta protest. This is a student rights protest. Let’s make that clear.

– ACB, post 1

Well, Wes. It’s your move.

PS: Thanks to the anonymous tipster on the FIRE development!

EVENT
Prometheus Recruiting

Are you curious about fire spinning? Do you just like fire? Do you just like spin-y things? Did you see the Prometheus show last night? Are you interested in joining?

Then contact kprosise@wes or come to the first Prometheus practice this Monday night at 7PM in Butterfields courtyard. (If its raining, you should probably just email her).