• Art Jahnke

    Senior Contributing Editor

    Art Janke

    Art Jahnke began his career at the Real Paper, a Boston area alternative weekly. He has worked as a writer and editor at Boston Magazine, web editorial director at CXO Media, and executive editor in Marketing & Communications at Boston University, where his work was honored with many awards. Profile

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There are 8 comments on Blackout Traps 20 in Warren Towers Elevators

  1. Thanks for this article, my friends and I were saying that we were expecting this article on Monday. Not only Warren should have gotten information. Why wasn’t the campus emailed in general to be reassured of the situation? Like Kelly Brescia, we all had no idea what was going on.

    And what was up with the fire trucks, police cars and ladders outside of the BU bookstore on Sunday?

    BU stop being secret-y

  2. This was handled really well, a nice contrast to the Myles evacuation earlier this semester–on which BU Today did not report, keeping residents even more in the dark.

  3. “Temporary mobile generators were quickly put in place”
    last a little bit of an understatement more like 4 hours later. I know it takes a while to get things like that but like the person above said the school completely ignored that fact that there were 1600 students sitting on the street until 12:30. They told us an hour and then 3 hours later they finally send a message. I’m really frustrated with the way this situation was handled. At least let us know in advance. Many of us could have found places to go if we knew it would be this long.

  4. If you read the FREEP, you would know that 2 students were trapped in an elevator in Myles Sunday night which explains the fire trucks in the area.

  5. As an alumna of BU, I enjoyed reading this article because it reminded me of the time I was in Warren Towers in 1991 and the entire dorm was exposed to carcinogenic toluene and booted out onto the sidewalk in the middle of the night with no notice except a fire alarm.

    We didn’t get back in for days and some of us were still in our pajamas.

    Good time, good times…

  6. I don’t believe this article is highlighting accurately the extent of the emergency that occurred on Saturday. All of Warren Towers was evacuated, which doesn’t typically happen – which goes to show how dire the situation must have been. The type of blast that affected the transformer, for those who aren’t aware, is especially dangerous and could easily have caused injury, or worse, if individuals had been nearby. Smoke and heat can lead to a fire so this sounds like a legitimate concern. It must’ve took a long time for re-entry because safety and emergency personnel had to assess the situation and BE CERTAIN that the building was in fact COMPLETELY SAFE for residents to come back. We weren’t evacuated just because someone felt like it – it was necessary!

  7. I lived in B-tower a few years back, and for some reason, every, every fire alarm in the building was B tower.

    Smoke alarm malfunctions at 1 am? B-tower.
    SMG kid thinks setting off the fire alarm at 4 am during finals is funny? B tower.
    Senior RA burns his popcorn and sets off the fire alarm? B-tower.

    I have such fond memories of standing on the street at 4 am in December with sweats and winterwear hastily piled over my pjs while watching some guy with a guitar play/sing “The Song” and a girl standing there barefoot in a silk nightgown because “omggg the buidling’s on fireeeee!!” I also have fond memories of walking down from the 10th floor while B&G guys insensitively compared our fire drill to 9-11, which naturally made all of the New Yorkers’ blood boil.

    Seriously though, I was leaving a wedding at The Castle on Saturday night, heard an alarm going off and looked over, and of COURSE it was coming from Warren. Some things never change!

  8. Last night, we lost power for a few seconds at the LSEB just down the street (around 5:30 or 6pm). I left a few minutes later and saw a fire truck pulling up in front of Warren towers and several power generators lined up along the street in front of the towers.

    Did something else go wrong with the electrical room over there?

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