Harnwell College House residents were woken by a fire alarm early Saturday morning at 4:00 a.m.
The alarm is believed to have been set off by a malfunction in the mechanical room.
Harnwell's House Office issued an e-mail to its residents Saturday morning attributing the alarm to "a huge amount of heat and steam [that] emanated from the mechanical room."
Residents were also without hot water until 4 p.m. on Saturday afternoon. The students living on the 24th floor did not have any water at all for a short period of time.
The e-mail from the Harnwell House Office stated that the water problems may have been connected to the causes of the fire alarm, as the "water repair was a result of a steam issue."
College freshman Sukriti Drabu was not sleeping at the time, but said the alarm was still aggravating.
"Almost everyone was sleeping," Drabu said. "It was definitely an inconvenience."
College sophomore and 24th floor resident Emily Buzzell was not informed of the water situation.
"The water was annoying; they never told me it would be unavailable," she said. "I had to shower in Pottruck."
Prior to Saturday's alarm and water shutdown, Harnwell residents were subject to mechanical problems on Friday.
Though officials told residents that only one of the building's four elevators would be subject to a power shutdown on Friday afternoon, all four ended up being affected by an electrical outage.
Pauline Park, a College junior, was on her way to work around 10:00 a.m.
"I waited 15 minutes for the elevator and decided to use the stairwells despite living on th 23rd floor," Park said. "All of the lights were out though so I only made it to the 22nd floor."
"It was frustrating," she added. "They could have scheduled [the power shutdown] earlier in the day or during the weekend when it would bother less people."
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