Malfunction in a cable in the electric installation of Skaptopara 2 Residence Hall's Block C triggered the fire alarms and forced students to flee the dormitory short before 3 A.M. on Tuesday, Feb. 23. The smell came from the second floor corridor, from the ventilation system in room 288, Residence Hall Director Ilko Drenkov said. “I decided to evacuate everyone on the block because the cables could have caught fire any moment.”

RAs had already gathered the students living on this floor in the main lobby of the dormitory, when the fire brigade arrived. They checked the ceiling, the bottom floor, and the electrical systems and found out that a choke had burned, Drenkov said. Smoke from the cable had entered the ventilation system and started one of the four detectors on the corridor. The fire brigade fixed the problem in the installation the same night, RAs from Skaptopara 2 said.

No rooms were checked for electrical appliances because the incident was a technical failure. “It was not electrical overload because this particular choke is for the lights of the corridor and not for any particular room,” Drenkov explained and added that the choke had simply worn off. “This [incident] was a test for us and we saw that we react well.”