Beinecke fire scare leaves one student injured

By E. Ryan Smith

A student whose name the University has yet to release was injured after a fire alarm triggered a series of precautionary measures at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library yesterday.

At 2:30 p.m., Beinecke's fire alarm sounded, surprising workers and students who quickly evacuated the building. Police believe that the smoke from a student worker's cigarette may have been at fault. The smoldering butt caused the library's automated fire-extinguishing mechanism to turn on, sucking all the air out of the stacks and replacing it with halon gas, which smothers flames.

While this routine procedure prevented any fire from damaging the library's collection of rare books and manuscripts--not to mention the exquisite transluscent marble--it also caused one student worker in the stacks who did not heed the alarms to breathe in the gas. In the absence of oxygen, the woman fainted as her lungs expanded due to the influx of halon.

"You know, like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with the girl who eats the Jawbreaker and gets bigger and bigger and rounder and rounder, until she explodes? It was kind of like that. We rolled her out of there," said one security guard, who asked to remain anonymous.

Any permanent damage to the woman's respiratory system was narrowly avoided, thanks to the replacement of the gas with normal air as soon as the threat of fire had been eliminated. The woman was taken to University Health Services, where, after a series of tests, she was diagnosed as pregnant and sent home. They expect her to return to her normal size shortly.

Fire Marshall Michael Johns said that the accident would never have happened if so many people had not crammed into the library all the time, something he vowed to crack down on. He also said he was unaware that the gas posed so great a danger to humans. "At least it's better than the carbon dioxide stuff we used to pump in."

This is the first time in over a decade that anyone has been injured by Beinecke's fire extinguishing system. Yale historian Gaddis Smith, PC '54, GRD '61, explained that the pit in Beineke Plaza used to be filled with water, which could be emptied into the library whenever a fire was feared.

Later in the afternoon, at a hastily arranged press conference, President Richard Levin, GRD '74, made a prepared statement apologizing for the incident. "I'm sorry," he said. "Sorry we didn't test this stuff on humans before. It's great at immobilizing people, though." He demonstrated on his sidekick, Dean Richard Brodhead, BR '68, GRD '72, handing him a balloon. "He thinks it's full of helium," Levin said, and winked. Brodhead promptly sucked the gas and, like a pufferfish, ballooned to six times his normal size.

The specter of yesterday's near disaster looms large for Yale administrators, and the crisis could get worse. Two canisters of the gas were found missing from Beinecke this morning. A crack ROTC unit, under the command of Flagg Youngblood, BK '97, has taken credit for the theft.

"You give us control of the Old Campus and we'll give you the gas," Youngblood, covered in facepaint, said in a videotape to the police.

Still, Yale Police insist that they have everything under control. Assistant Chief James Perotti whispered that the incident did not even warrant an entry in the weekly police blotter, sparking rumors of a coverup. Perotti stood by his decision, however: "No blood, no foul." No foolin'.

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