Around 12:45 p.m. May 14, Elon sophomore Reese Hurwitch said she saw and smelled smoke coming from her classroom on the third floor of the Koury Business Center, KOBC 310. According to Town of Elon Fire division chief Brandon Waddell, there was a problem with the HVAC system in the classroom, causing smoke to form.
Waddell confirmed that the HVAC system in KOBC 310 was the root cause.
Hurwitch said that she walked into the classroom next door to tell a professor about the smoke, as she and another student were the first ones in the room. Students were then evacuated from the Koury Business Center after Hurwitch called Campus Safety and Police, who instructed her to pull the fire alarm. Final exams that were to take place at 1 p.m. were delayed.
“They were like ‘Okay, we need you to pull the fire alarm’,” Hurwitch said. “Which, you know, is kind of a dream for a final exam period.”
As of around 1:35 p.m., students and staff were able to go back inside the building. With students and their professors returning to the classroom, some exams continued, while others were canceled and students took the tests home. Waddell said that no one was in danger while waiting outside.
“I currently have four crews operating inside,” Waddell said as the fire department was inside the building doing checks. “I have mutual aid companies from the city of Burlington and the town of Gibsonville staging outside to recycle my guys in case the need rises where they need to be pulled out and get a break. And, or if anything happens inside, they're out here for extra security purposes.”
Elon senior and volunteer firefighter Noah Rubin said that he got a notification on his phone that the fire department had been called to the business center. Rubin said that he was already inside — he then ran upstairs as people were trying to get out of the building.
“I smelled the odor of smoke,” Rubin said.
Rubin described the smell of the smoke as one of fire. As a volunteer, Rubin said that he has done this routine of checking before and did not feel scared.
Elon senior Whitaker Brown was about to take his final tax exam when the alarm was pulled at around 12:55 p.m.
“I’m not really too stressed about my exam, so not really that,” Brown said. “It’s just annoying.”