"Funky" fumes prompt caution in Sunday BiHall evacuation

Author: Scott Greene

Students evacuated McCardell Bicentennial Hall just before 5 p.m. on Nov. 2 when "copious" amounts of smoke in a fourth floor lab set off the smoke alarms and prompted the response of numerous Middlebury and neighboring town law enforcement authorities.

In what the College's Department of Public Safety first reported as a chemical fire, a plastic tray overheated inside of a drying oven set at too high of a temperature. The plastic soon melted and dripped onto the heating element of the oven, according to Director of Public Safety and Associate Dean of the College Lisa Boudah. Though no open fire occurred, the smoke and fumes then billowed down into the building's lower floors.

Brian Isbell '11, studying in the lower floor of the Armstrong Science Library, said that the smell tipped him off right away.

"I smelled smoke coming out of the upper floor, funky smelling smoke," he said while waiting outside the building to retrieve his belongings. "My stuff is still in there and I have an exam tomorrow."

Public Safety officers initially commented that the building would likely remain closed for an extended period of time. After the alarm sounded, fire engines from Middlebury, East Middlebury, Cornwall and Bristol quickly pulled into the BiHall parking lot along with two police cars and two ambulances.

Several members of the College's administration, including Boudah, Vice President for Communications Mike McKenna and Dean of the College Gus Jordan also arrived on the scene between 5 and 5:30 p.m. They consulted with authorities while they waited for Tim Wickland, director of science support services, to arrive and assist in identifying exactly what kind of fire had started.

"It just took a while because they did not know what they were dealing with," Jordan said.

Once Wickland arrived and the authorities confirmed that plastic had caused the fire, and not a more dangerous substance, they activated the emergency exhaust as more firefighters moved in with fans to clear the building. Boudah received an e-mail at 6:10 p.m. notifying her that the building had been cleared of the fumes, and the building soon reopened.