By Tien Nguyen
Residents evacuated Rambler College Park South, formerly known as Landmark, in the middle of the night Friday due to a fire on the sixth floor. Though the fire was handled by the College Park Volunteer Fire Department, the event disturbed late-night plans for some University of Maryland students.
“I was annoyed because I was going to study for my exam,” said Marlo Minshew, a sophomore biological science major.
The fire alarm went off around midnight, and residents were unable to reenter the building until around 2 a.m.
Minshew was not the only student whose schedule was disrupted that night.
“I have class at 8 a.m. on Fridays,” said Tala Hraky, a sophomore public health science major. Hraky had not gone to bed until 3 a.m., and said she had to wake up at 7 a.m. the next day.
Numerous fire trucks arrived at the scene. While waiting outside of the building, residents watched as the firefighters cut into Rambler South’s parking garage door to access the North Trash Room where the fire occurred, Hraky said.
The Rambler South team currently believes the incident resulted from “a lit object being discarded down the trash chute,” according to an email distributed to residents by the team.
The College Park Volunteer Fire Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Residents noticed a strange odor left behind when they were allowed back inside. The Rambler South team assured that the automatic sprinkler system “activated immediately to help contain the fire until the fire department arrived and cleared the building,” though the odor of lingering smoke raised health and safety concerns for some residents.
“We weren’t sure if we should sleep there because that’s harmful to you, so we just opened all of our windows,” said Hraky.
The odor was especially strong in the hallways, she noted.
Minshew described an odor, which had reached her bedroom before the fire alarm went off, as a sulfur-like stench. It is unclear if the odor came from the North Trash Room or the sixth floor.
By the time Minshew reentered the building, she and her boyfriend realized that the smoke smell still lingered on the fourth floor.
“We don’t want to breathe that in, so we go back out,” she said.
Minshew and her boyfriend left the building because of the smoke smell for approximately another hour before reentering.
The odor disappeared by the next morning, according to Hraky.
“As a reminder, Rambler College Park South is a strictly smoke-free community,” said the Rambler College Park South Team in the email distributed to residents. “Discarding lit items, cigarettes or smoldering materials anywhere on the property, including down trash chutes, is prohibited and can create a hazard for the entire building.”
Rambler College Park South did not respond to a request for comment, and the exact cause of the fire remains under investigation.
Featured Image: The outside of Rambler College Park South apartments on Sept. 23. Photo by Audrey Bengtson.
Editor’s Note: This story will be updated with more information.