There was an entirely accidental and utterly anonymous kitchen fire on Sunday night. The building wasn't burning down--it was something on the scale of a pan on fire, which was immediately extinguished into oblivion. The major problem was that the sprinklers went off--and broke. The most immediate concern for the kitchen and everyone inside was that the water issuing therefrom was, in fact, a disconcerting shade of black. The second was that one of the sprinkler heads immediately broke off, starting to flood the kitchen and surrounding rooms. These two concerns might not have been disasterous in and of themselves, but the emergency response workers also had difficulty turning off the system. This entire flooding system ended up running for about 25 minutes.

Two sections of our hall were flooded, as well as parts of the halls beneath us. Walcott (my third of the building) was allowed to return to their rooms; everyone else had to find alternate housing for the night, because the fire workers were afraid of electrocution. Now, the entire kitchen is off-limits for serious cooking and (until last evening) was covered in a thin layer of sediment. The carpets smell like death. And the administrative authorities of East Campus are less than thrilled with us, despite the fact that most of the problems were caused by the failure of the sprinkler system.

I wasn't there, didn't see anything, don't know anything...