A fire that started in the laundry room of Pearson Residential College’s fourth floor around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 4 activated fire alarms that caused residents to evacuate the building.
This is the second time a laundry room has caught fire in Mahoney-Pearson Residential College this year.
“University of Miami police, facilities personnel and the Coral Gables Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at Pearson Residential College at 4:20 p.m. Tuesday,” the University of Miami said to The Hurricane in a statement. “The alarm was triggered by smoke from a dryer in the fourth floor laundry room.”
According to students, the entire building evacuated outside for approximately an hour before returning to their rooms through the outdoor emergency stairwell.
“Everyone else on my floor thought it was just a run of the mill false alarm, so no one was in a rush,” Jordyn Minnus, a student living on the fifth floor of Pearson, said. “I would say that around the fourth floor I started to smell some smoke, which was pretty heavy.”
However, the fire alarm did not sound on the upper floors according to residents.
“I was actually inside for a while when the fire was going because I couldn’t tell,” Cedric Fine, a seventh floor resident, said. “My floor’s fire alarm didn’t go off so I couldn’t tell until I smelled it.”
Coral Gables Fire Department responded within a couple minutes of the alarms sounding.
“By the time I got downstairs, I could hear the sirens in the distance,” Minnis said. “The fire department is pretty quickly responsive to the problem, they treat it like it’s a serious issue, and this time it happened to be.”
A video taken at the time of the fire by a student living on the fourth floor of the Pearson dorms showed smoke rising out of a dryer.
Mahoney Residential College faced a similar fire in October 2024. Students living in those dorms were also evacuated, but waited nearly two-and-a-half hours to get back inside.
“It was resolved pretty quickly. I saw the fire trucks come up and the firefighters,” Isabella Cely-Garcia, a Mahoney resident, said. “I saw them unscrew the fire hydrant and then they ran inside, and they took care of it.”
According to the University, after fire officials checked and cleared the building, students were let back in at 5:15 p.m.
Although there was no sprinkler induced damage, students said, objects crashed onto the floor due to the fire. No long term damage to dorms has been found because of this.
“The University is awaiting the fire department report on the cause of the smoke in the dryer,” UM said in a statement.