OCT. 15, 2024 — The Walla Walla Fire Department was dispatched to Penrose Library after the fire alarm was triggered by smoke building up inside the building. At roughly 7:50 p.m., students at Penrose Library reported smelling burning rubber and seeing a smoky haze. 

At around 8:10 p.m., the fire alarm went off. According to witnesses nobody pulled the alarm, it was triggered by the smoke. The sprinkler system in the library did not activate. 

Nearly two hours after the smoke initially appeared, after fire trucks had left the scene, security sent an alert to the campus community. 

While the security alert stated that smoke was only detected on the third floor, all of the students the Wire spoke with suffered from smoke on the second floor. Other students reported thickening smoke on the 1st floor of the Library.

Students were evacuated when the fire alarm went off, though some who smelled the smoke say they felt the need to leave nearly ten minutes before the evacuations began. 

Director of Security Greg Powell responded to the incident and went inside the library with the fire department. 

“It was a failed belt on the HVAC system that was spinning without the belt on there and created a lot of smoke because it was metal on metal,” said Powell.

Though the library was evacuated, Powell says there was ultimately little risk to students. 

“There was no danger to students at that point,” said Powell, “there was light smoke up there.” 

McKenna McShane, Junior, was in study room 209 for a native plant coalition meeting when she noticed what she described as a skunk smell. 

“That quickly turned into a burning rubber smell,” said McShane. 

McShane said the group waited to see if the smell got worse, and it did. 

“We also noticed that it was starting to get hazy … we could see the haze in the lights,” said McShane. 

According to McShane, once they saw the smoke they notified employees at the Library’s front desk, then they left the library. Roughly ten minutes later, the fire alarm went off.

“The president of our club was complaining of lung issues following the smoke exposure,” said McShane.

Junior Aneesah Sands was also on the second floor of the library when she noticed the smell of burning rubber, as well as a haze in the air. 

“We were on the floor you enter on, floor two. It was definitely like a burning rubber smell and then it transitioned to more of a burning smell. I would say it definitely got more hazy over time, when we first started smelling something funky it wasn’t really hazy, and then as the smell got stronger it got hazier and hazier,” Sands said.

As Sands describes, the fire alarm hadn’t gone off before her group evacuated the building. The distinct smell of burning, and the noticeable haze in the air, was the reason they left. 

Shortly after, fire alarms went off due to smoke concentration in the air. 

“We got up and looked around and thought okay, the smell isn’t really going away, one person went and talked to a librarian…the librarian said okay we’ll call security, and we kept hanging out in the room when we noticed the smell was getting stronger. We started noticing it was kind of hazy, and so we decided to head out,” Sands said.

Senior River Woodruff was also in the library before firefighters arrived. He reported an experience similar to McShane and Sands. Woodruff explained that the smoke looked heavier in the Library hallway outside of his 2nd floor study room. He also reported that other students in the library seemed to notice the smoke, before the fire alarms were triggered. 

“It was never a thick smoke haze, it was just filtering through the light and then at some point, other people were outside of our door,” Woodruff says.

As of the time of publication, the library will not re-open until Wednesday, Oct. 16 at the earliest. According to the security alert, the library will open when smoke has been cleared from the building.