“They started having alarms come in to Public Safety. We responded to try to find out what the problem is, we tried traditional resets to get everything going, and for some reason they weren’t resetting,” says John Schmaltz, director of Public Safety.
Unfortunately for students, this meant that the alarm system had to be disabled until the problem was fixed.
“Monday came along, they got the parts, plugged ’em in, it’s a computer circuit board was the problem … it didn’t work. And then the other ones didn’t work.”
This meant that the University had to take extra steps to make sure students were safe.
Torshia Maxwell, resident director of Park River and Regents Park said that she felt safe in the building while it was under fire watch. “We had the Hartford Fire department here with us, which made me feel more secure in this building, and they walked around the building, just like the RAs do rounds, they were doing rounds for fire safety.”
As of early morning October second, the fire watch was cancelled because the alarm system was functioning in most of the building.
“Like when we were under fire watch, we have…I think the east and the west wing where if their fire alarm goes off, they need to call Public Safety immediately because for whatever reason, it’s not connecting,” Maxwell says.
Both Public Safety and Reslife stressed the importance of evacuating whenever an alarm sounds.