McCoy fire prompts residents to evacuate

A small fire on the third floor of McCoy Hall required the building's occupants to evacuate onto E. 34th Street late Friday afternoon, a legitimate emergency in a week of fire drills and security system tests on the Homewood campus.

The fire started at around 3:30 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 16, in room 301 of McCoy, the result of an unattended toaster oven. It remains unclear whether or not the room's occupant, sophomore Alexandra Tanzola, was in the room at the time. Tanzola and her roommate were unavailable for comment.

The fire soon spread, charring an adjacent microwave and triggering the building's fire alarm.

Jack Hayworth, a freshman living on the first floor of McCoy, described the consequent evacuation as a "massive inconvenience."

McCoy Hall houses upwards of 500 students who are primarily sophomores; freshmen occupy the terrace level and first floor of the building. Approximately one hundred students were in the building at the time of the fire alarm.

Pursuant to McCoy's evacuation route, the students gathered across 34th Street from the building, next to Wolman Hall.

"Everyone was really confused and a little scared," freshman Julianne Wilson, who lives in McCoy, said.

Outside, however, aggravation, not anxiety, was the tenor of the scene.

"There was a surprising lack of panic," freshman Spencer Perl said of the crowd of students.

Perl, who was walking to Charles Commons at the time, noticed the crowd of evacuated students and onlookers alike standing across the street from the scene. The atmosphere of the crowd, Perl said, was reasonably subdued.

"People were standing across the street, looking up and taking pictures and videos on their cell phones, but if it hadn't been for that, I would have dismissed it as a regular fire drill," Perl said. "People didn't seem too worried."

Jokes about McCoy "burning to the ground" flew, largely from evacuated sophomores.

A Baltimore Fire Department truck arrived on the scene shortly after 3:50 p.m; Hopkins Campus Safety officers were already present.

The evacuated students had been outside for no more than twenty minutes before fire officials deemed the building safe for reentry.

The damage that resulted from the fire proved to be minimal and was easily remedied.