New North residents kicked out of their rooms for up to three weeks after an electrical fire

If you’ve ever lived in USC housing, you’re probably familiar with the annoying fire drills that seem to happen all the time. At this point in the year, most people are so used to them that they don’t bother rushing out.

But last Friday, the alarms went off in New North, and it wasn’t a drill. And unless you live there or were on campus that night, there’s a chance you might not have even known there was a fire. USC kept it pretty lowkey.

It started in a room on the third floor from a power surge protector. The fire burned through the room and also damaged the two rooms on either side. However, most of the damage to the dorm rooms came from the sprinkler system. Water seeped through the floors of the residence hall and flooded rooms on the first floor.

“The floor in my hall had a lot of large puddles and was just soaked,” a freshman living on the first floor of New North said.

Imagine sorting through wet clothes, worrying about mold, and trying to save your laptop from water damage on your Friday night. Not fun.

Many residents were disappointed with how the school handled the situation.

“[The dorm] waited until the next afternoon to even start putting fans in my room… we were told not to sleep in our rooms that night and that they would open up a study lounge and put mattresses in it,” explained a freshman whose room was affected.

Two nights after the fire, the residents got an email telling them that they would not have access to their rooms for at least a week, forcing them to scramble to pack a weeks worth of clothes and supplies while finding a place to stay.

“It was a very stressful week and one I hope to never experience again,” the New North resident said.

Most of the damage has been fixed in the lower level floors and residents are beginning to be allowed back into their rooms. However, the rooms burnt by the fire are still being repaired. The residents of those rooms are reportedly being housed in the Radisson and were originally told that they wouldn’t be able to return to their dorms for three weeks.

I guess we can now officially call New North the most “lit” dorm.