College/University (on campus), School / University Providence, RI – Sprinklers activated properly during Brown University locker room fire November 21, 2014 viking210 During Thursday’s electrical fire in the men’s track and field locker room in the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center, all fire prevention measures functioned properly, said Stephen Maiorisi, vice president of facilities management. Though several of the athletes present at the time of the fire observed that the sprinkler system did not immediately activate, Stephen Morin, director of environmental health and safety, wrote in an email to The Herald that the heat-activated sprinkler heads did respond to the fire. The fire was “10 or 15 feet away” from the heat detector, said Luke Muzikowski ’17, a member of the team who was present at the time of the fire. Both the detector and the sprinklers are activated when the room reaches a certain temperature, Devlin said, adding that the alarm and sprinkler systems were therefore not at the threshold temperature to activate the alarm by the time the runners left the locker room and the building was evacuated. “It worked exactly the way it was supposed to,” Maiorisi said.
