News Reports
Smoking Dryer Extinguished
Emergency Personnel Remove Burnt Towels, Uniforms
By Robert Heberle
Hoya Staff Writer
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| Andreas Jeninga/The Hoya Several D.C. Fire Department vehicles responded to reports of a fire in McDonough Gymnasium late Wednesday night. Firefighters said that the contents of a dryer caught fire, but the cause is still unknown. |
The contents of a dryer in a McDonough Gymnasium locker room caught fire late Wednesday night, prompting the D.C. Fire Department to send several emergency vehicles to campus.
Fire Department personnel said the dryer was damaged beyond repair and will have to be replaced. Firefighters extinguished the smoldering contents of the dryer, which filled the area surrounding the building with smoke, and removed a large pile of burnt towels and uniforms from the machine.
Sgt. Joe Aceto, who responded to the call, said that he was unsure what caused the dryer to begin smoking.
“It could be a faulty dryer. It could be they had too much stuff in there and the heat built up,” he said.
Aceto also said that only the clothes inside the dryer, not the dryer itself, had caught fire.
Karen Frank, vice president of facilities and student housing, said that the dryer was an industrial-size unit used by athletic personnel to wash uniforms and towels. Facilities personnel put fans in the area to remove the smoke from the building after firefighters departed, she said.
“I don’t know about the damage,” Frank said. “The vendor that supplies it has been notified.”
Frank also said the cause of the problem was still uncertain, and that overloading alone would probably not have caused the dryer to begin smoking. She said that officials are still looking into various potential causes, including the possibility that the lint filter may not have been cleaned out before the dryer was activated.
Mike Callahan, Georgetown’s head sailing coach, said he discovered smoke coming out of the dryer after he left his office at about 10:45 p.m.
“It smelled funny, so I went up and smelled it and it smelled like something was burning,” Callahan said. “One of the dryers was smoking.”
Callahan said that he notified facilities personnel nearby, who called the Department of Public Safety. DPS then notified District fire officials, who put out the smoldering dryer and began to depart campus at about 11:45 p.m.