Was it regular popcorn, or jalapeno-slim jim-onion-cheese-sauerkraut-and-cabbage popcorn?

That would have really left them shaken up. I hope everyone got out in a jiffy.

yeah, like no one had set off the fire alarm in the dorm before.
my senior year, the only way i could get a single dorm room was in a freshman dorm. we averaged about 3-4 fire alarm evacuations a month, and mostly at 3am

This exact thing happened my sophomore year.

Shouldn't that be a kernel panic?

/Just asking

/ read it as ejaculation at University of Texas dormitory

Had this happen to the engineering college on campus here a few years ago. Tasty smoke.

It happens more often than you think.

I don't blame them. The smell of popcorn makes me want to puke.

wow Texans sure are tough.

/fark texas

I could understand if it was microwaveable pork rinds -- those things emit toxic fumes even without being burned.

This is nothing. It happened at Oregon State a couple years ago at 3AM. Some stoner gave his popcorn TEN minutes then went back to his room and forgot about it. People were so pissed at him.

When I was in school, I got back to my dorm room at UVM, very drunk, and decided to make bagel bites. The microwave in the kitchen area had been taken away (thanks to many cases of burnt popcorn) so I used the oven without a baking sheet.
They take about 20 minutes to cook, so I went back into my room to wait, fell asleep, and was the only one to not leave during the evacuation.

/whoops

Don't use the little fireman to put out the fire and the burnt popcorn won't smell so bad.

I just spent a year in freshman dorms at UCSB (as a freshman, incidentally), and this happened, with no exaggeration, four times.

Yer doing it wrong.

In college, one night when I came back drunk.. I put the popcorn in the microwave for 30:00 instead of 3:00, while I passed out in my room.

Lots of smoke and everyone had to get outside in the middle of winter for a while. (8 inches of snow). Everyone blamed this one kid.. who was so drunk he admitted to doing it.

/Don't feel too bad about it since he was a jacka$$.

Musta been a real stampede getting out of there...

Popcorn, orange, student body... is there anything about UT that isn't burnt?

too bad there wasn't someone high up, picking them off as they ran out.

We need a screencapture of the redhead guy from Family Guy wih the caption of "EVERYBODY PANIC!"

spqr_ca: Shouldn't that be a kernel panic?

/Just asking

Win.

/beat me to it.

Reminds me of the time my friend put a hamburger with one of those fast food wraps with the foil layer in the microwave. The sparks actually ignited the thing, with the ensuing flaming burger setting off the alarms and prompting the dorm evacuation.

I am having respiratory problems from reading the article.

Um ...cough....

hell, this is a normal day 10am at work.

/the burned popcorn, not the evacuation. No one evacuates when the alarm goes off.
//who needs burnt popcorn at 10am every day?? It stinks up the whole office until noon.

EdVenture: I don't blame them. The smell of popcorn makes me want to puke.

TTTTTHHHHHIIIIISSSSS

i caused a full dorm evacuation TWICE within the same school year at college for the same damn reason both times...left the room while warming up a cookie from Subway and forgot that the timer dial would stick.

Flaming white chocolate macadamia nut smells like roasted asshole

there's also a large possibility that i'd shotgunned too many beers prior to these incidents, alas I've forgotten...

I think what they did is quite reasonable considering the situation.

Here is a picture of the dormitory

This happened my junior year in college. Some idiot burned popcorn in the basement kitchen and set off the fire alarms, necessitating the evacuation of about 230 students at 1:00 AM.

Small popcorn fire (pretty much just smoke) triggers fire alarm at 1am in my Sophomore year dorm, which led to lots of girls standing around on the cold sidewalk in their PJs.

Yeah, not seeing a downside here

So this was the first time something got burned in the dorm? Seems unlikely. I spent a week in my girlfriends tiny French dorm room and people were constantly burning shiat. If I didnt smell burning I got nervous.

this happened every other week in my Freshman dorm, some frat guys even came in one time and put a TV Remote in until it set of the alarm.

oh, and one of the evacuations i caused was in the middle of an ice storm, in the middle of the night. In Louisiana. We don't do below freezing well. My classmates were NOT pleased!

This is news? This happened several times a year at my university in all the dorms I lived in on campus. Well, either because of burnt popcorn in the middle of the night or some idiot girl using too much hairspray right beneath the smoke detector in the morning when everyone's trying to shower and get ready for class. Just one of the joys of on-campus living.

This is news? When I was in college, this was an almost monthly occurrence. If burnt popcorn wasn't setting off a smoke detector, something else did. Usually around 3:00 in the morning. Loved seeing all those sleepy-eyed coeds flee the building in their nightshirts.

Luckily it wasn't a pretzel, the most dangerous snack food in Texas.

/cue Bush pic
//pretzels, the silent killer, even with Secret Service Protection no one's safe
///Texan

When I was away at school, during my freshmen year there were a few times that we had to evacuate the dorm. When it wasn't a planned fire drill, it was usually popcorn or ramen. But these things always seemed to happen 2 something in the morning. In the middle of winter. 2AM-ish in the middle of winter in upstate NY is really cold.

Everyone would make it their business the next day to find out which schmuck couldn't get their popcorn/ramen making shiat together.

I now feel stupider for having read TFB(log).

Sheesh, they let just about anyone add things to the intarwebs these days.

Why is this news? This happens once a week at every college campus in the country.

A much more interesting story (and true to boot):
A couple years ago, back when I was in college, I lived in an awesome, student-run dorm, where one of our usual events was Topless Tuesday Dinners. People would come and be in various states of topless-ness (depending on their comfort level), chip in a buck, and we'd all make a simple dinner together.
One particular Tuesday, we were making either grilled cheese or french toast when the smoke from our cooking set off the fire alarm. Being it still a dormitory, school police are required to also respond to all fire alarms.
You'd never seen so many people trying so fast to put their shirts back on so we wouldn't have to explain to school cops why a bunch of students are eating grilled cheese/french toast sans shirts. Luckily, we were all able to get dressed and didn't make the evening news.

/hates popcorn anyways

Furia: This is news? This happened several times a year at my university in all the dorms I lived in on campus. Well, either because of burnt popcorn in the middle of the night or some idiot girl using too much hairspray right beneath the smoke detector in the morning when everyone's trying to shower and get ready for class. Just one of the joys of on-campus living.

Hell, we had drunks pulling the alarms, and smokers trying to be clever and unplug the 'phone home' smoke detectors in their rooms.

I lived in tower 'A' at RIT. This happened ALL the time. Not just a few.

it sucks, having to trudge down 8 floors and wait in the snow, particularly when you KNOW its just friggin burnt popcorn because you can smell it all the way down.

Food never triggered a smoke alarm back in the day- we had 1 evacuation, 1, and it was my fault, but it wasn't food.

spqr_ca: Shouldn't that be a kernel panic?

/Just asking

That's some Grade-A win. Where do I send your internets?

Hell, just last month I got lucky I didn't set the fire alarm off at 2:30 am in my dormitory. But my story is different than most of yours. Instead of the popcorn starting to smoke, something in the microwave broke and the microwave itself started to smoke when the bag was about half popped. Needless to say, I immediately unplugged that piece of shiat and I was just waiting for the smoke alarm to go off, which would trigger the alarm automatically, but it never did. The room absolutely reeked for about an hour though.
/Microwave was made in October 1987...only 3 months after I was born. I'm shocked it lasted this long
//Would've felt like a douche for accidentally setting off the alarm at 2:30 a.m.

Archie Godwin: wow Texans sure are tough.

/fark texas

Typical ignorant moron

Gotta agree with Furia and reaper2k. Most campus fire alarms in our district are burnt popcorn or steam from showers. Happens multiple times per year, per dorm/frat. It shouldn't be that easy to make the news. It may be because they rolled out the HazMat team.

The smell of burnt microwave popcorn is enough to make me hurl, but not enough to call in a haz-mat team.

hukedanfonix: Hell, just last month I got lucky I didn't set the fire alarm off at 2:30 am in my dormitory. But my story is different than most of yours. Instead of the popcorn starting to smoke, something in the microwave broke and the microwave itself started to smoke when the bag was about half popped. Needless to say, I immediately unplugged that piece of shiat and I was just waiting for the smoke alarm to go off, which would trigger the alarm automatically, but it never did. The room absolutely reeked for about an hour though.
/Microwave was made in October 1987...only 3 months after I was born. I'm shocked it lasted this long
//Would've felt like a douche for accidentally setting off the alarm at 2:30 a.m.

Maybe you should be more worried that the alarm didn't go off?

contrary to subby and the article, the dorm isn't part of, or associated with, the university at all. when i lived there the fire alarms went off so often we all learned to sleep through them. classy place.

How did this get greenlit? How did this even get covered at all? This exact same thing happened more than 5 times my freshman year in my dorm alone, and then 3 more my sophomore year. It's really amazing how many Northwestern students could tell you all about Molecular Biology, or the markets in Hong Kong ....but can't work a farking microwave.

When I worked at a movie theater in my youth, I hated the summer time because that's when we'd get all the newbies who would invariably burn their first few batches of popcorn.

I grew up in a agricultural area, and I hate the smell of burnt popcorn more than cow funk.

Wouldn't really want to eat either one...

This paranoid post-9/11 culture makes me crazy. Makes me want to blow up a college or something.

who needs burnt popcorn at 10am every day?? It stinks up the whole office until noon.

That's when you ban popcorn in the office, or smash the microwave into a billion pieces with a hammer, just as you hit send on the following Inter-Office Memo:

"All:

There have been several instances over the past few weeks of burnt popcorn in the office kitchen, which have led to the fire alarm being set off and the building evacuated. Clearly those who make popcorn at the office are not sufficiently intelligent to use a microwave, therefore the microwave will be removed from the kitchen today.

Please direct any complaints in the first instance to myself, and immediately following your complaint please proceed to HR, where you will be given your final cheque and a slip of paper conveying my fondest wishes for all the best in your future endeavors.

Signed,

The Boss"

I have actually worked on the UT campus for summer camps a few summers in the recent past. (oblig: and I'm getting a kick out of these replies) I can attest that the greatest consequence of this will be the 300 or so angry phone calls from irate parent to the organizers of the camps wondering how in hell they could let their precious snowflakes endure such horrible travesties.

Incidentally, during my sophomore year at NYU I used to cook steaks and pork chops on a charcoal hibachi in my dorm room. I just took the plug out of the smoke detector. Never got in trouble. When smoke filled the hallway, the RA knew it was time for dinner.

spqr_ca: Shouldn't that be a kernel panic?

/Just asking

First think I thought of after reading the headline... I see I'm not alone in that... was hoping I was :(

Are we sure it wasn't a vaporizer?

When I was in school our Resident Advisors were told that burnt popcorn was the most common method people used to cover up the smell of marijuana smoke. So the RAs made sure they told us they were trained masterfully in this sniffing skill and that if they smelled burnt popcorn, they'd investigate.

I was never sure if that was true or just something they told us to keep us from setting off the smoke alarms.

Had one or two fire alarms, but the worst was when our building flooded on a Sunday afternoon. Spent seven hours out of our dorms waiting to find out how much of our shiat was ruined by water damage. Fortunately, maintenance was smart enough to go through and get all the computers off the floor. Still impressed by the quick thinking of that maintenance man.

Archie Godwin: wow Texans sure are tough.

/fark texas

I will ask you nicely to rephrase that remarke sir!

Some girl did this in my dorm once. Instead of the popcorn button she hit the potato button. She got in the shower and soon after I guess the bag burst into flames. It also happened to be about 1am during finals week...and it was snowing outside. We waited outside for an hour before they let us back in. She got pelted with quite a few snowballs. The worst part was the dorm smelled like burnt popcorn for the rest of the week.

I'm glad I don't live at my dorms anymore (for any UF students or alumni out there, I lived in Hume my freshman year, but was not, by any means, a Hume Kid), and although it was for hundreds of reasons, this is one of them. My girlfriend's roommate was burning latkes (and the oil she was frying them in, and scorching the pan everything was in) and no alarms went off. My girlfriend and I smell burning in her room (2 or 3 rooms from the common room) and we find her roommate casually trying to cook them but confused as to why they are cooking so fast. This was going on for 5 or 10 minutes by now, so we run to open up all the windows, but even before then, no alarms went off.

I live in an apartment now, and my first attempt at pan-frying fish was frustrating, at best. I decide to turn up the heat, and do the same thing. However, 2 minutes within the temperature change, my loud fire alarm goes off. I can't get it to stop, so I rip it out of the wall. My apartment was filled with smoke and I lost a pan and spatula.

Now, I feel much safer in my apartment.

/not as interesting as Topless Tuesdays

UnoriginalAndrew: How did this even get covered at all?

It's a Houston news site and the incident happened at UT. Gotta love them Texas college rivalries.

/Gig 'em

University Towers isn't a UT dorm, its a private one, and typically smurt students don't live there. Can't say I'm surprised.

One time, long ago, in a time called "My Early Twenties" I was all hopped up on Valium and Jack Daniels and I thought it would be a good idea to heat up some left over pizza. I set the oven on BROIL and put the entire pizza box in the oven, then I decided to go to sleep. In the morning there was a charred pizza box on the front porch. My roommate said he woke up and the house was full of smoke and he could not wake me up.

Another time I was playing my guitar and I "fell asleep" during a dramatic chord. I woke up the next morning with my guitar, emitting feedback, still strapped on and I had a bloody knot on the side of my head where I hit the windowq sill on the way down.

If you are going to bring back pills from Mexico invest in protective gear.

Between the time this thread went live and my post I'm sure at least one dorm has been evacuated because of burned food.

For some reason, I want to bust out my Kershon Kingsley albums.

Setting off a fire alarm is one thing, but complaining of respiratory problems?

What a bunch of pussies.

When I was in college I tried to flash dry some marijuana, but hte only microwave was out in the communal hall. So I covered a cereal bowl with said weed in it with a paper towel. 30 seconds into it the paper towel catches fire. I quick pulled out the bowl and stomped out paper towel. I sped walked back to my room and pondered if it was really a good idea to be growing weed in my dorm room. Good times.

This happened last winter at UW-Madison, but instead of a dorm, it was the chemistry building.

My dorm's fire alarm at the U. of Kansas gets pulled once a week. Beat that obnoxiousness, Texas.

dothemath:

Another time I was playing my guitar and I "fell asleep" during a dramatic chord. I woke up the next morning with my guitar, emitting feedback, still strapped on and I had a bloody knot on the side of my head where I hit the window sill on the way down.

At the University of Iowa, fire alarms were only triggered by the tsunami-sized waves of gonorrhea prowling the dorm halls. Not even bleach will set foot in Burge.

I'm on on site contractor for the army and work on base. One afternoon our building was evacuated when the fire alarm went off. Turned out one of the geniuses out here was popping popcorn in the microwave and just walked off. When we were let back in the whole building smelled like a movie theater so that was pretty cool.

spqr_ca: Shouldn't that be a kernel panic?

/Just asking

That was the first thing I thought of when I read the headline too. You win, subby fails.

I remeber when I lived in tower 'B' at RIT, in the middle of the night I would sneak into tower 'A' around 2 or 3 am, put some popcorn in a microwave there, set it to 30 minutes, then run back to my dorm. Then me and my friends would watch all the people in tower 'A' stand outside in their night clothes for an hour or so until they were let back in.

Fun times, fun times....

I hope whichever stoner purposely burned the popcorn got a few hits before they were evacuated.

/DNRTFA
//no smell overpowers burnt popcorn smell

That happened in my office. Somebody put a bag of popcorn in the microwave, I guess they forgot about it because it caught fire and the fire alarms went off.

We all had to evacuate, and wait for the Fire Chief to give an 'all-clear' to re-enter,

ginko: hell, this is a normal day 10am at work.

/the burned popcorn, not the evacuation. No one evacuates when the alarm goes off.

Same here, except "only" once a month or so. We have to evacuate though -- the fire marshal can be a real biatch if you don't.

this is almost as funny as "someone" putting a twist on an old classic by putting a bag of poop in a microwave with some popcorn. ten to fifteen minutes should be plenty of time to make the most nauseating smell you could possibly imagine.

/for dorm use only
//seriously, sulfur escaping hell would smell better.

My freshman year at college we had a fire alarm every week in the wee hours of the morning at varying times. Only once was it an actual fire, and the culprit was some idiot who couldn't cook popcorn. The rest of the time it was just some idiot pulling the alarm on the way out of the building. We had to evacuate every time, but eventually the fire department stopped showing up.

My freshman and sophomore years I lived in one of the high rise dorms at UNC (Mo-town!). Drunk assholes pulling the fire alarm at 3am happened at least a couple of times a month. I think our record for one night was three false alarms. The only real fire we ever had was when someone put a doorknob into the microwave - they removed the microwaves after that.

/this is why we can't have nice things...

Wanted for questioning....



LEMMIE SHOW YA SOMETHING !!!!

A friend of mine once had the bright idea of trying to bake cookies using the microwave in the dorm I was staying in at the time. Surprisingly enough, she was not high at the time.

this happened all the time at my dorm and im sure at every dorm in every university everywhere. one time my roomate tried to make mac and cheese and didnt put water with the cheese powder and it started spewing smoke and set off the smoke detector and our 10 story dorm had to be evacuated

I think making popcorn is stupid. If you go around using high temperatures to cause corn kernels to explode, you could easily die. I guess he never thought of that before it happened? It is not a "tragedy" when people die in fires caused by the attempted manufacture of popcorn. It is one possible outcome of their risky behavior.

Where I live we used to have a "popcorn alarm" almost every month, until the management put up a sign on every floor that showed how to nuke popcorn.

"put popcorn in microwave PRESS POPCORN BUTTON,PRESS START"

pretty much put a stop to them, Don't think we have had one in the last 4mths

This happened at work, but no evacuation. I work in assisted living facility and the fire detection system is... interesting. Basically every time it goes off its popcorn or something. The last time it was a little older dude in a wheelchair whose defense was "It was the CENA! I can't reach the microwave!" Jury still out on that one, of course.

/actually a lady set it off three days ago
//she swore the building was on fire and was very sorry when they explained it wasn't
///apparently she was told she was on Double Secret Probation or something (not really, of course)

I set off the fire alarm in the girl's dorm my first year at college because of burnt popcorn. I just stood there with the rest of them, acting as innocent as possible.

/not my fault, bad microwave.
//nope, not telling which university.
///well, a hint...it was in Minnesota.

The article neglects to mention that it was 600 middle and high school cheerleaders.

Let me emphasize:

SIX HUNDRED CHEERLEADERS

More info here.

amanogowa
Hell, we had drunks pulling the alarms, and smokers trying to be clever and unplug the 'phone home' smoke detectors in their rooms.

We just covered them in tape.

You know, fraternities and sororities used to do this to flush people out of the dorms so they could recruit them...

Phoney fire alarms reduce awareness, really.

As somebody who has lived in the overpriced tenements known as college dorms for the last two years now, I have to say there are few things I hate more than when some idiot decides to burn popcorn or cook smelly food. If you insist upon creating nasty olfactory experiences in your room, please open a window or turn on a fan or spray some Febreze.

I have a kind of similar story of near-panic in a dorm. It was around 12:30 am and I was up studying for an organic chemistry test when the arsehole who lived above me started playing his (very loud) guitar. I was tired and grumpy but too lazy/tired to go up one flight of stairs and politely and rationally tell him to please stop playing his guitar, as I had done once before when he pulled similar early morning guitar shenanigans. So, I took a broom out of my closet and started slamming the handle into my ceiling very violently. "This will teach him a lesson," I thought. My moment of triumph ended abruptly when I saw flakes of plaster raining down from the ceiling. For the rest of the semester, I was kind of nervous my ceiling would cave in. It never did, though, but it occasionally rained plaster flakes in room 327 for the next few months.

But yeah, burnt popcorn sucks. Even though I am a student at Texas A&M, I do not find myself compelled to blame the stupidity of the University of Texas. I have personally witnessed stupidity in College Station, so I don't think Texas A&M really has any right to talk.

/I lack school spirit, but that's okay with me
//maroon is not my color

My freshman year at Virginia Tech was spent on campus at West Ambler-Johnson.

iirc, it was around a 12 story dorm, lot of people in it. Fire alarm goes off, EVERYONE has to get out. Some idiot burning popcorn would force an evacuation a minimum once a month.

And, on occasion, during the dead of winter at 2 am. God I wish the person who caused that alarm had fessed up... Mob justice would have been had!