Inside the 301 fire: Here’s what actually happened

At approximately 8 p.m. on Sunday, April 2, a fire alarm was set off at The New School’s 301 Residence Hall. When first responders arrived, a stovetop fire in a 19th floor suite had been extinguished by the heat-activated sprinkler system. By 8:45 p.m., the building had been inspected and all unaffected rooms were cleared for reentry. 

But for many residents of 301, the night was far from over. 

Chaos and confusion ensued in the hours that followed as the 55 residents whose suites were deemed unsafe were evacuated at a moment’s notice – with no real answers as to where they were headed, how long they should prepare to be gone for, or how they were supposed to get there.

In most recent events,  all 540 residents in 301 were relocated in the week following the fire due to gas line issues  in the building. Reportedly, the cause for relocation was unrelated to the fire incident. The university’s communication surrounding the subsequent incident has been subject to scrutiny.

Act 1 – Sprinkler System Floods The Stairwells

Following the fire, water from the sprinkler system streamed down many areas of the residence hall. According to Thomas Whalen, who oversees facilities and building management at The New School, “the water ran down an electrical riser and followed the breaker panels all the way down to the third floor.” This led building officials to shut off power to the suites directly below the suite in which the fire occurred, all the way down to the third floor. Internet access to all suites on the 19th floor was knocked out entirely. 

Edward Bauer, a first-year at Parsons School of Design and a resident of  301, was getting ready for a movie night at a friend’s fifth floor dorm when he heard the fire alarm. “This has happened many times before so it wasn’t like a crazy occurrence. Of all the times the alarm has gone off (around three times since last fall) there has never been an actual fire, so nobody really reacts,” he said. 

As housing had yet to confirm the nature of the alarm, it wasn’t until footage began to surface in a group chat which included a number of 301 residents, that Bauer realized it wasn’t just another false alarm. From their fifth floor window, Bauer and his friends could see firefighters pulling up to the building. “There were three trucks and police and stuff, and that’s when we knew this was serious,” he said. 

Facilities shut down the elevators after water leaked down the elevator shafts so Bauer had to climb the stairs to his 16th floor dorm. “I had to walk around a huge puddle forming at the bottom of the stairwell,” Bauer said, and when he reached his floor, he saw a pipe spewing water everywhere. “I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway and that’s when I realized the entire carpet was drenched. I was wearing slippers and I could feel the water soaking through them,” he said. 

Upon entering his suite, Bauer immediately noticed “a puddle of water forming by the front door, dripping down from the electricity box,” he added that “the wall underneath was starting to turn a bit of a nasty color, like a tea stain.” 

Meanwhile, residents reported brown muddy water streaming down the staircase. The water’s color led some residents to think it might be contaminated and some New School students went to TikTok to voice their concerns. 

When asked about the contaminated water concern, Whalen explained that “because the sprinklers are made of black pipe, when the water sits for an extended period of time, sediment from the pipes can accumulate and cause discoloration and a greasy-looking consistency, especially in the first few gallons that emerge. It’s definitely not sewage.”

While Bauer and others inside the building faced flooded stairwells and fouled elevators, a different scene unfolded outside the building.

Act 2 – Students Struggle To Re-enter Their Dorms and Asked To Move Out

Shortly after the alarm had sounded, Sacha Konikoff, a first-year at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts and a resident of 301, stepped out of an Uber onto the curb of the building, only to see firetrucks lining the sidewalk. 

“I tried to walk into the building and everyone was like, once you’re out, you’re out, nobody’s allowed upstairs. So over the course of time, a bunch of students were coming home from dinners, coming home from going out or whatever they had been doing,” she said. 

“We felt so bad because there are people who are coming down to pick up their Uber eats deliveries and they didn’t know that once you came down, you weren’t allowed back up,” Konikoff added. 

Many 301 residents said that the university did not communicate with them sufficiently during or after the event. “Nobody knew what was going on,” Konikoff said, “[not] even the RAs. I would talk to one RA about something and they’d be like, ‘that absolutely didn’t happen, who told you that?’ One of the other RA’s!”

According to 301 residents, the first email they received stated that it was a false alarm. Thirty minutes later, residents received a follow-up email acknowledging that there was in fact a fire. According to university officials “the RA on-duty was in contact with Campus Security and based their communication on the early information that was available.”

Konikoff believes that school officials “genuinely must have thought it was a false alarm because there’s no reason they would send that out thinking it was real. It just comes to show how little communication they really do have because somebody is saying it’s a false alarm, meanwhile the whole fire brigade is coming over to take care of a legit fire.” 

After 45 minutes of standing around waiting, Konikoff said that the building’s residents were allowed to go upstairs, instructed to proceed with caution as the stairs were severely flooded. 

Around midnight, Konikoff and her suitemates heard a knock on the door. She said that it was one of 301’s Assistant Resident Directors and the superintendent of the building who informed them that water had made its way into their electrical panel, and they had to move out immediately. “At this point, I’m like, throwing my entire closet into my suitcases with no idea where we were headed,” she said. 

Furious, Konikoff and her suitemates marched down to the office by the mailroom, where she found another Assistant Resident Director. “My roommate pulled a whole Karen on them, and we were all quite proud of her, ” Konikoff said. “Somebody needs to tell me what’s going on here. I’ve just been told that my room was fine, but now we are being forced to move out. I’m not about to go and move out if I don’t know where I’m going! How are we getting there? Who’s paying for that? Because I’m certainly not? I can’t walk to Kerrey Hall in the middle of the night as a girl in New York City with all of my belongings,” said Konikoff’s roommate. 

In the early hours of Monday, April 3, Konikoff and her suitemates piled into an Uber XL with as many of their belongings as they could squeeze in the trunk. By the time they had settled into their temporary suite at Kerrey Hall, it was nearly 5 a.m. 

Act 3 – Students Move Out of 301 While Navigating Miscommunication 

Konikoff and her suitemates woke the next morning to an email stating that they should expect to be in their temporary locations for a minimum of a week, and that they should return to 301 at their earliest convenience to collect any additional belongings. They arrived to learn that “Housing had not informed the security guards that they were being let in,” Konikoff said. “Nobody talked. Nobody. There was no communication.”

At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, April 4, Konikoff made her way across the street from Kerry Hall to the Parsons building on Fifth Avenue. Towards the end of class, her inbox pinged with an email from housing. Since the length of her relocation had yet to be confirmed, she expected to be informed that their stay would be extended, or that they wouldn’t be able to move back in at all. Instead, the email stated that her suite had been cleared for return, and beginning at 12 p.m. they had until Friday to move back to 301.

Because of the pattern of inconsistencies in the university’s instructions, Konikoff walked to 301 to make sure everything was in order before lugging all of her stuff back over to her suite. “At this point we didn’t trust any of the emails that were being sent out. Everybody we talked to had said something different, each contradicting the next,” she said. 

Konikoff and her suitemates were assured that everything was confirmed to be safe for them to move in, only to find that the power wasn’t working upon entering their suite. Konikoff reported this to the RA who was shocked and brought Konikoff and her suitemates to their office where they waited for around a half an hour while electricians were consulted. “This is the point when I was really plotting. Like, this is my villain origin story. I was really, really pissed” she said.

The school revised the information that they had provided in their email, now telling Konikoff that the suite would be ready at 4 p.m., not 12 p.m. “I took all my things right back to 301 again and then moved in with no power in my room because I had no other choice, ” Konikoff said, as she was scheduled to fly home the next morning and wouldn’t have another chance to relocate all of her belongings. “In total, I’ve moved in and moved out at least four times in less than 48 hours. As we were packing we literally just kept telling ourselves that this isn’t real, this has to be an April fools prank.” 

For more information, see the breaking news articles covering the dorm fire, and the gas leak relocation.