Resident Assistant Josh Stamper heard the fire alarm sound and knew exactly what he had to do. Stamper hurried through the residence halls of Woody/Shales trying to evacuate students. When he reached the fourth floor, he found himself moving through a snow-white cloud of foam.
"It sits like a golf ball in your lungs," Stamper said when describing breathing in the air. "We were coughing up the extinguisher stuff for awhile after."
Almost 75 students had to be evacuated from Woody/Shales Residence Hall in LaFollette Complex during fall break when someone decided to empty a fire extinguisher by spraying the fourth floor study lounge, Stamper said.
Residents waited outside the building for almost 45 minutes while the fire department checked the building, he said.
"Everyone was scared," Stamper said. "All the residents didn't know what was going on."
The incident was only one of the 53 fire alarms that have happened since the beginning of the school year at Ball State University, according to police records. Five alarms were real incidents, 25 were malfunctions, 20 were accidents and three were maliciously pulled.
Police Chief Gene Burton said, however, that fire alarms have not been a problem this year when compared to past years.
"There is an associated cost because when we get a report of a fire alarm we'll send a minimum of two officers and the fire department is dispatched automatically," Burton said. "The only time to my knowledge that we've broken down the costs is when we've had a false fire alarm that's been maliciously pulled."
George Edwards, associate director of facilities for the Housing and Residence Life office, said the fire department does not charge the university money for false alarms.
The University Police Department treats a fire alarm like any other call and so its costs are absorbed by the department, Burton said.
"We understand it's very annoying for students to be taken out of their rooms in the middle of the night and that's the last thing we want," Edwards said.
A 12-year, $200 million renovation schedule is in place to replace and improve the fire alarm system, among other things, he said.
Several of the residence halls already have what Edwards called "intelligent" alarms, which can self-adjust to the amount of dirt in the room and alert the main office when they need to be cleaned.
According to law, Edwards said the alarms are cleaned every year and checked for sensitivity.
"We're upgrading the buildings to meet current fire codes," Edwards said.
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