A small fire in the basement laundry room of the Pierpont Dorm in Southwest Residential Area caused the evacuation of the building for over an hour on Monday night.
Ben Diaz, a freshman who lives in the dorm, said that when the fire started, he could see smoke coming from the building and there was a noticeable odor in the air.
Amherst firefighters were still investigating the cause of the fire on Monday night, but Assistant Chief Lindsay Stromgren said that the fire started in a dryer in the laundry room. The exhaust pipe from the laundry room may have caused some of the leaves outside of Pierpont to catch fire as well.
Residents were allowed to return to their rooms around 11 p.m. Stromgren did not believe that the fire affected any of the rooms in the building.
Patrick Hoff can be reached at [email protected].
