Karisma Polly | Contributory Writer
On Saturday, during a Pokémon event, smoke started coming out of the vents at the Wolfe Center at Biscayne Bay Campus. Students near the area said they saw what was happening long before they received an alert and were not informed of the cause.
The smoke was caused by the HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) system snapping, and it spread through parts of the building from the vents. The alarm went off during a Pokémon event with 100 attendees.
FIU police were already on campus conducting an area check, so they were able to quickly and safely identify the source of the smoke and evacuate the students from the building. The Miami-Dade Fire Rescue responded to the alert and arrived quickly.
All Students were issued an alert to evacuate the building at 4:05 pm. Then, not long after, at 4:38 p.m., an all-clear was issued, and all activities were resumed.
Some of the students did not hear the alarms at all. “So I was walking out of my dorm, and I saw like two fire trucks pull up by an ambulance, and then a bunch of FIU PD go around. I went to go check it out, and apparently it was Wolfe Center. I also figured out what was going on before I received the alert,” said Caroline Knightly, a marine biology major
Students also felt this situation could have been prevented. “I feel like something like this shouldn’t be happening. Smoke and vents shouldn’t be happening because that can travel across to other vents, which is concerning for people with breathing issues,” added Knightly.
Other students in housing had to evacuate the building even though it was at the Wolfe Center.
“Over the alarms we hear, ‘Hey, there’s smoke coming out of Wolf Center,’ and what we didn’t notice at the time was that it was only the Wolf Center, as it goes through our alarm system, so apparently there was some connection between them or something, so we headed down the stairs,” said Max Konigsberg, a marine biology major.
Students were also not informed of what caused it. “We just got a message that there was smoke coming out of the WC building,” Said Saniya McKillery, a psychology major.
The incident was resolved quickly, and no injuries were reported. Students hope future alerts will be faster and clearer to avoid confusion during emergencies.
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