Kirkland Steam Pipe Triggers Fire Alarm

On Sunday night, Oct. 25, the Kirkland House fire alarm rang, forcing undergraduates to evacuate their dorms. According to an email sent to Kirkland residents, a steam valve malfunction in the kitchen shared with Eliot House, which is currently undergoing renovations, triggered the alarm. Most residents could not reenter their dorms until the fire department made necessary repairs, leaving many rooms barricaded as late as 3 a.m. A similar event occurred this past spring in Adams House, with students displaced well into the night.

Nellie Fitzpatrick ’27 was working on a problem set due at 11:59 p.m. when the disturbance occurred. Before the alarm, she heard banging from outside her room, though this was not unusual given the adjacent construction.

At first, Fitzpatrick and her roommates were unsure whether there was a real emergency, since the alarm had rung several times in Kirkland throughout the year. As Fitzpatrick exited the dorm, though, she saw fire trucks arriving and what looked to be smoke rising from a building, which she later learned was steam. “The banging was still really loud, and we were outside with our tutors,” she said. She later learned that a steam pipe caused the sound.

Other Kirkland residents, like Catherine Li ’27, learned about the incident while outside their dorms. “I got texts from my entire suite of roommates,” Li said. “I was like, ‘There’s no way [Kirkland]’s actually on fire.’”

The Kirkland deans and tutors invited students into the faculty deans’ house to escape the cold and give updates about the incident, Fitzpatrick explained. As they waited, the Kirkland community came together to enjoy each other’s company, she said. “It was a nice bonding moment, all being in the faculty deans’ house and kind of commiserating together, eating candy and chips,” she said. “There was someone [who] had a ukulele, and they were singing songs.”

Li felt that Kirkland faculty did a great job of supporting students given the situation. “It was a little bit tough because no one really had that good of information going on,” she noted. She appreciated how the house deans welcomed students into their house and encouraged Kirkland residents to reach out if they needed accommodations for the night.

The house faculty proposed several solutions to help students sleep, including setting up cots in the Malkin Athletic Center, Li said. “They were just trying to figure out contingencies to get students to bed as soon as possible.”

Students in the Kirkland Annex, separate from Smith Halls and the house’s furthest building from Eliot, were allowed to return first around midnight. Still, because of the uncertainty, Fitzpatrick stayed at a friend’s dorm.

Because Fitzpatrick left her room in a rush after the alarm, she didn’t bring any of her work and couldn’t finish her P-set in time, disrupting her plans for the night. “It was frustrating not being able to have my laptop and do work that night, and we weren’t allowed to go back in our rooms, and then I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted to,” she said. Still, Fitzpatrick appreciates that safety comes first and that professionals on the scene took the necessary precautions.

Similarly, Li only had her wallet, phone, and keys with her, she explained. Li said she wanted to wait out the repairs before accessing her belongings. “I wear contacts … So I was a little concerned about my ability to just function the next day.”

At around 1:30 a.m., Kirkland staff brought small groups of students into the dorm to pick up necessities, Li said.

Li’s professors were accommodating and supportive as she reached out, even though she had to miss class the next morning. Some of her friends, on the other hand, had pressing commitments, including midterms at 9 a.m. the next day. “It definitely put a little bit of a damper on a Monday,” she noted. “These emergencies happen, similar to how it happened in Adams last year, and you are just gonna have to put things on hold until that figure is out.”

A similar event occurred last April in Adams House, with students displaced into the night. Suitemates Henry Zeghibe ’28 and Ryan Brewington ’28 were forced to sleep in a different building and were eventually asked to move to a different dorm room for the rest of the semester.

Because Zeghibe’s room was below the room that caught on fire, he and his roommates woke up to water dripping from their ceiling, having soaked into the floor, he said.

“We were definitely initially surprised. But then I think we all knew that, you know, if it’s a fire, which clearly made sense that there was actually something happening because there was that water coming through the roof,” he explained. “Kind of early on, we already had the expectation that this was not just a drill.”

Furthermore, Zeghibe explained that because Randolph is in a separate building from the Adams dining hall, it did not experience false fire alarms last year. “I don’t think we ever had a false alarm last year, and the only time it ever went off was when we actually had that fire,” he said.

In contrast, Fitzpatrick noted that Kirkland has experienced multiple fire alarms since the start of the school year.

After leaving the dorm, Zeghibe saw smoke coming from the room right above his. “We figured that was obviously connected to [the water dripping above us], and then we sort of … had a sense that this was going to probably affect us quite badly,” he noted. “After a while, I think the Adams House people understood what was happening.” Zeghibe spent the night with a friend.

When Brewington returned to his room, he saw that the water had soaked his and his roommates’ belongings, including clothes, electronics, and personal items. In response to the water damage, Brewington said the University took all their clothes to a professional cleaning company.

Maintenance workers also came to repair the damage in the affected rooms, Zeghibe said. “They had all these different kinds of equipment to try and get the moisture out of the walls and things,” he explained. “That might have worked for some lower floors, but I think our floor was certainly a little bit of a lost cause.”

The Sunday after the April fire, Brewington said the University informed the suite that they would need to move to the Eliot Inn. The investigation into the fire’s cause was inconclusive.

Brewington remembers his deans coming to his suite and asking what they could do to help in the moment. “Our response was, ‘We need a blanket and pillow. We don’t even have anything to sleep on.’ We literally moved all our stuff over, but our bedding was taken by the professional from the professional cleaning company,” he added.

Brewington got help from both his friends and his teammates during the move. “We had to literally move everything from the third floor to Eliot, which isn’t that far, but when you’re carrying a couch and a TV and a coffee table…” he said. “If I didn’t have them, I don’t really know what I would have done.”

Today, people are living in the formerly damaged suites. “I think what they had to do is they just had to tear them up and redo them over the summer,” Zeghibe said.

From the experience, Brewington learned always to be prepared. “College is already very unpredictable. But when something like this happens, you really have to be able to roll with the [punches],” he said.

Julia Bouchut ’29 (julia_bouchut@college.harvard.edu) is Associate News Editor for the “Harvard Independent.”