On May 5, 2022, around 12:55pm, the fire alarms for Building C, D and E were blaring an ear-piercing noise. All of the students and faculty left the aforementioned buildings due to the alarm. Several students were unsure of the cause, from around the Village Square to people loitering around Lech Walesa Hall (LWH). Aaron Le, one of the students that was in Building E, heard the alarm while at his work study position. He, and a group of students and staff, evacuated the building. “A few of us from work figured it was a false alarm. It might have been a student trying to avoid final exams, pulling a fire alarm to be slick.” Le said about the alarm.
NEIU police were contacted for further details, revealing the cause for the fire alarm being in the C Building on the sixth floor. While in the report, it was listed as a burnt popcorn bag, the smoke from a burnt bagel set off the alarm. As it so happened, the alarm for that building is connected to the other buildings. The offices on the sixth floor will have a scent of burnt bagel for quite a while.
The person that set off the alarm, Almudena Yebra Romanillos, one of our writers, who works an internship in the building, felt very sorry as to what happened. “I’m really sorry, and I won’t leave something in the microwave again. Lesson learned.”