Students were evacuated from the Langford Architecture Center Monday when a transistor caught fire on the second floor.
Bart Humphreys, public information officer for the College Station Fire Department (CSFD), said the fire was electrical in origin and that sometimes transistors simply malfunction or short out, causing fires.
“Since it was energized, electricity was running through it and they couldn’t use water, they used dry chemical extinguishers,” Humphreys said. “They had to shut power off to the building. The first time they shut off the power, the emergency generator kicked on, so they had to turn it off again.”
Humphreys said the transistor that caught fire was located near the Visualization Lab on the second floor, which contains a high amount of electrical equipment. He said that damage costs could be expensive if equipment was ruined.
According to Humphreys, CSFD received the original call about the fire at 9:16 a.m. The first unit was on the scene five minutes later, and the fire was under control by 9:43 a.m. People were kept out of the building until noon because of the heavy smoke and high level of carbon monoxide in the air.
Classes in the building were canceled for the remainder of the day, and offices were closed, said Ryan Garcia, a communications specialist for University Relations.
“They are assessing damage right now and will continue to assess the damage, but it was a pretty minor incident,” Garcia said. “There were no reported injuries.”
Bob Wiatt, director of University Police, said that although it was a minor fire, the incident still caused traffic problems.
“We had to keep traffic controlled around the area. It was a mess-up of vehicular traffic,” Wiatt said. “We had to make sure no one entered the building.”
Humphreys said that this fall has been “a little busier than usual” in regard to alarms on campus.
“Annually, we are on campus on average 500 times a year,” Humphreys said.”Mostly for alarm malfunctions or accidental alarms.”