Tag Archives: Arkansas

Apartment Building, Residential

Little Rock, AR – Fire at low income housing building controlled with help from sprinkler system

One person was injured in an apartment fire early Thursday at the Albert Pike Hotel in downtown Little Rock. The injuries were not considered life-threatening.  The fire was contained to one apartment on the eighth floor, but it triggered the building’s sprinkler system which flooded some residents’ apartments, according to the Little Rock Fire Department.

An investigation into the cause of the fire was still underway, a Fire Department spokesman said Thursday. Residents of the Albert Pike Hotel have lately raised concerns about the frequency with which false alarms are triggered in the building.  City data show that the Fire Department responded to 500 alarms there since 2015, and more than 50 percent of them were because of unintentional smoke detector activation. “We don’t think twice about [the alarms] anymore,” Brown said.  Brown has lived in the residential high-rise since 2014, and in that time, Thursday’s fire was only the second time the alarms signaled an “actual emergency,” he said.

He and other residents have said they no longer bother to evacuate their apartments when the alarms sound. “My right leg ain’t going to be able to go down eight flights of stairs every time the fire alarm goes off,” Brown said.  Constructed in 1929, the Albert Pike Hotel is a low-income housing complex that allows tenants to use Section 8 vouchers for federally subsidized rent. Residents typically pay about 30 percent of their incomes toward their rent. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department pays the rest.

 

College/University (on campus)

Fayetteville, AR – Fire at University of Arkansas basketball arena contained with help from sprinkler system

The Fayetteville Fire Department was called to put out a small fire in a suite at Bud Walton Arena prior to Saturday’s game between Arkansas and Tennessee. The fire caused the sprinkler system to douse seats in the northeast corner, in sections 122-126. Sources said the suite was one used by the family of Arkansas head coach Mike Anderson.

Eyewitnesses said they saw smoke and smelled burning in one of the suites. A spokesman from Landmark, the company which the UA employs for security, said the situation is under control, but they are cleaning the areas affected by the water from the sprinklers.

Fans in the affected sections were not allowed in their seats until just minutes before tip-off and the lights were left on during the pregame so the clean-up could continue. No comment was immediately available from the fire department or UA.

Food Processing, Manufacturing

Fayetteville, AR – Sprinkler system activates to help control fire at Tyson Food’s facility

The Fayetteville Fire Department responded to a fire inside the building at Tyson Food’s Inc. on S School Avenue.  The fire happened at 3 p.m. inside the Mexican Original plant.  Dispatchers and Firefighters said the sprinkler system was activated.  Firefighters were on scene to help get the smoke out of the building.  The building was briefly evacuated, according to a Tyson spokesperson.