At approximately 10:45 p.m. on Thursday night, students received an emergency alert text message stating: "UB Police are evacuating Red Jacket Residence Hall on North Campus because of an unidentified odor in the building."
Firefighters and police burst onto the scene as Red Jacket Residence Advisors hustled to evacuate students from the quarantined dormitory.
Just what was the scent? Nobody seems to know.
"Firefighters have gone through numerous times with sophisticated detection equipment and they're not picking up anything," said Joseph Brennan, associate vice president for university communications.
Students were allowed back into their dorm at 1:03 a.m., after sitting outside for nearly three hours.
Brennan said six students had symptoms of burning eyes and skin. Those students began coughing and panicking while the RAs smelled an unpleasant odor they couldn't identify.
One student was loaded onto an ambulance and taken to an area hospital, but Brennan said the move was solely precautionary.
"She has a history of asthma," Brennan said. "It might have just been the stress of the incident."
When the fire alarm first went off, residents brushed it off as another drill.
"To me it was kind of scary…Usually when there is a fire drill, we're like: ‘Oh, we won't have to go outside, it's just construction-related. Not that big of a deal,'" said Victoria Largo, a senior psychology major.
The odor came from the fourth floor of Red Jacket building two. Students who were evacuated were hosed down as a precaution in case they had anything on their skin. They were then covered in disposable blankets and transported to the ground floor of Greiner Hall.
Students who live in the dorms were left with worries.
"I feel like: how long has this been going on, how long have we been inhaling this gas? We're finally just now smelling it, so how long has it been lingering around us?" said Amber Miller, a sophomore nutrition major.
Brennan assured students and parents that there was nothing to worry about.
"We've ruled out natural gas, we've ruled out chemicals," Brennan said. "Nobody was seriously harmed. We apologize for the disruption that it caused tonight, but it's better to be safe than to be sorry."
Brennan stated that the harmful odor wasn't related to a previous construction project – the Red Jacket Dining Hall had undergone renovations for the past year, and students thought the situations may have been related.
Firefighters were on the scene from local suburbs Getzville and Brighton.
Testing was over as of 12:20 a.m. The incident was still being investigated at the time of print.
Email: news@ubspectrum.com
