Small fire in HRN

Many Hamilton College House students awoke yesterday morning to the familiar blaring sound of a fire alarm -- but this time it wasn't a drill. The Philadelphia Fire Department responded to a fire on the sixth floor of the residence at 3901 Locust Walk at 9:11 a.m. They dispatched four fire engines, three ladders and two chiefs and extinguished the fire by 9:18. The fire was caused by a cigarette, according to the Fire Department's report. Wharton junior Scott Krochek, a resident of room 614, said the fire started in his garbage can. He later sent out an e-mail to the sixth floor listserv apologizing for "this morning's incident." "It was due to my own stupidity and I would like to apologize to all the people that I endangered and inconvenienced," he wrote. And in an e-mail sent out earlier in the afternoon to the same listserv, sixth-floor graduate associate Ann Carey warned students to be cautious when they smoke. "If you smoke in your room, be extremely careful and use an ashtray," the Communications graduate student wrote. "Do not ash out the window? [or] in any other kind of container, such as trash, as they can smolder for hours and then cause a fire/smoke." Sixth-floor resident and College senior Tova Rosman said she was headed out to class at around 8:40 a.m. when she smelled something burning and saw smoke coming from the west end of the hallway. On her way out of the building, she told the GA at the desk that she thought there was a fire. The building's fire alarm did not actually go off until about 20 minutes later, after 9:00. "What's really scary is that my roommates and I ignore fire alarms a lot," one sixth-floor resident explained. "And if I hadn't called up to my room, people would have thought it was a regular fire drill." She was also concerned that both the dorm staff and the residents of room 614 took so long to act. "I think it could have happened to anybody, but [Krochek] should have immediately done something," she added. Also, since Krochek's roommate could not find a fire extinguisher -- by that time Krochek had left the building -- Carey had to borrow one from another apartment. "I think he made a dumb mistake but the scary thing is that he didn't have the means to put out the fire in his own apartment," College senior Michael Tauer said. "They put fire extinguishers in there for a reason, and it's almost like they are teasing us," the sixth-floor resident added.