Macye Farrar, News Editor
Sewanee weeknights are typically characterized by late night study sessions at the library, riotous hang-outs with friends, or early bedtimes, depending on who you are. But no matter who you are and what you’re doing, one blaring, flashing factor will ruin any student’s activities: a late night fire alarm. Fire alarms are not all that common off the Mountain, but they can be a common occurrence across Sewanee’s campus.
Peri Feddermann (C ’28), a resident at Benedict Hall, where the fire alarms go off on a near-weekly basis, says the blaring alarms have been life changing. “It happens so often that I form a little plan in my head and I’m like, ‘Okay, the sweatpants that I’m gonna throw on are there, my jackets hanging there, my keys are there.’” she said. “And I’m waiting for it to happen at this point.”
The Sewanee Fire Department responds to every alarm across campus, as well as emergency calls in the wider Mountain community. Will Stacey (C ‘25), the Sewanee Volunteer Fire Department’s Training Officer, said, “The department as a whole there’s probably 15, 20, 25 total members responding. At any given time there’ll be eight students who respond, and so if it’s in the middle of the night, then we’ll most likely be coming from Ayres.”
Like clockwork, the volunteers all stop what they are doing to rush to the station. Because of their proximity to the station, the students are typically the ones manning the “primary and secondary rigs [trucks].”
The firefighters, whether students or community volunteers, fall into their respective roles as soon as they reach the station. “We have firefighters that are concerned with making sure all their gear is right and they’re getting in the back of the trucks,” Stacey said. “The engineers are getting in the driver’s seat, and they’re getting trucks turned on and everything ready to go. And the officers the whole time are making sure they’re listening to the radio.”
Once everything is situated, the trucks roll out of the station and gun it to where the call came from. Every call must be treated as if there is an active fire, even if it’s the middle of the night and a false alarm.
Claire Chiles is the fire department’s Canale Site Leader, said her time with the department has changed her view on the firefighters’ response. Having seen both actual emergency responses and false alarms, she now understands the gravity of sending trucks to answer calls. “I feel like sometimes students think it’s dramatic and the response the fire department may have, but after having worked here I understand that every call has the intention of you don’t know why it’s going off,” she said. “It could be burnt popcorn, it could be someone’s seriously injured, and you can’t cater the response based on how you feel.”
The Sewanee Fire Department responded to a total of 287 calls in 2024. These include mutual aid calls, where departments from surrounding area requests help with fires or rescue missions. These areas include Alto, Tracy City, Palmer, and other areas that typically take 30 minutes to reach. The majority of the department’s 2024 calls were false alarms, which totaled to 171. Of the false alarms, 130 were unintentional activations, 35 were system malfunctions, and 6 were malicious false alarms.
Fire Department leaders said fire alarms on campus have numerous causes, but the majority have a common denominator: ignorance. Whether it be blow dryers or long showers, anything that burns or steams has the potential to set off the alarms. “It doesn’t take much to set off a sprinkler here,” said Fire Chief Terry Smith. “A lot of times it’s the education of the people that’s there because… they’re not educated. You go in the showers and you have a fan, and [if] you’re gonna take a two-hour shower and you come out and open the door, if I were a sensor, I would go off too when all that steam rushes out.”
Many alarms are also caused by lack of respect for what they make Sewanee’s firefighters do, often being awakened by fire department radio alerts and having to rush to a middle of the night call.
“If you looked at [the alarms] you would think they were unintentional, but if you were educated on it you would look at them as intentional. Because if you’re told over and over again [about] the rules and policies not to smoke in the dorm [and you do smoke in the room], that’s an intentional alarm” said Smith. These violations of policy include smoking inside, lighting candles, and purposefully pulling a fire alarm with no cause. Smith and others added that it can be particularly annoying when students decide to blow smoke directly into smoke detectors, a not uncommon occurrence.
The potential for injury also rachets up each time fire alarm is tripped or pulled. Winter temperatures bring increased chances for ice. That can not only cause people evacuating the dorms to slip and fall on the ice, but also can also lead to the department’s massive trucks to skid on slick roads. “The fire truck weighs about 70,000 pounds, and so think about the momentum that it’s carrying,” Stacey said.
False fire alarms are not only inconvenient; they can take away resources from the department in cases of actual fires or emergencies. Each call normally has 15 to 25 firefighters responding to it depending on the nature of the call. The Sewanee Fire Department is responsible for covering an area around 84.5 square miles, making it difficult to answer a second call or request for mutual aid if one truck is away taking care of a false alarm.
From the beginning of his career as Fire Chief at Sewanee, Smith said, he has pushed for more education regarding what can set off fire alarms. Both proctors and new students are now instructed on what actions—such as smoking and burning candles—can set off alarms in dorms and other campus buildings.“The proctors this year have even become more educated in each hall,” Smith said. “They take a huge responsibility that I’ve seen this year in particular.”
Smith added that the department has also taken steps to educate Residential Living on ways to mitigate false alarms. “We’ve educated ResLife more this year than we ever have… [We said to them], ‘That’s where you increase alarm testing. You have to have so many alarm tests per year for each dorm to make sure they work.’”
Another reason for the department’s success is their emphasis on three components: community, service, and responsibility. Serving in the fire department is a huge responsibility, and one that its members do not take lightly. Spacey was particularly reverential about his time spent in the fire department. “One thing I really love about the department is the work that you put into training, to learning, to increasing your knowledge about things on the department,” Spacey said. “It pays off in a lot of different ways. Making you a better firefighter, a better driver, a better engineer.”