Police investigating this fire that evacuated WWU dorm
Western Washington University students fled their dorm after an apparently suspicious fire was reported Thursday evening, Jan. 19, school officials said.
No injuries were reported in an emailed statement sent Thursday night via a campus messaging system.
Buchanan Towers West was evacuated about 7 p.m. Thursday when smoke was reported in an outdoor stairwell, according to the statement
“Firefighters soon arrived on the scene to extinguish a small fire burning paper material which had been lit between cinder blocks in the corner of the outdoor staircase,” the WWU statement said.
University Police and campus officials are investigating the incident, the statement said.
“The fire department was notified via an automatic fire alarm and then the fire was upgraded as more information came in via dispatch,” Bellingham Fire Capt. Dustin Michaelis told The Bellingham Herald.
Firefighters vented smoke from the building, reset the alarms and left after about 45 minutes, Michaelis said.
Buchanan Towers is an eight-story dorm on the south end of the WWU campus, along Bill McDonald Parkway, according to the school’s website.
It was built in 1971 and a five-story east wing was added in 2011, according to WWU’s website and the Bellingham Business Journal.
Its total occupancy wasn’t immediately known, but the Business Journal reported that the original dorm had 424 beds and the 2011 addition brought the total to 529 beds.
Previous fires at WWU include a chemical lab incident that did about $2 million in damage to Morse Hall in 2015, a fire in the Ridgeway Commons dorms in 2013 and a fire in the Mathes Hall dorms in 1997.
Anyone with information about Thursday’s fire can call University Police at 360-650-3555 or use WWU’s anonymous tip line, 360-650-SAFE.
This story was originally published January 20, 2023 at 8:16 AM.
