I was at work this morning at 8am. At 8:45am I got a text asking what was going on in my building, with this picture:
It was news to me.
At 8:55am we got an alert saying “Avoid 1300 Univ Ave. Fire and Police on scene for working fire.” Hey, I’m at 1300 University Avenue!
We could see out the window that there was a campus police officer preventing people from entering the building. But the fire alarm had never gone off.
At 9:05am I called the campus police to ask what was going on. They said all the alarms were supposed to go off. They asked me to leave the building. I did immediately, but afterwards I wished I’d brought my lunch and laptop with me.
Apparently no one was hurt, but there seems to be quite a mess. This is on the same floor as my office, not too far away:
The fire seems to be around the corner from that shot, in the back-central part of the building. I peaked around the corner and saw a bunch of people standing around, but I was too shy to take a picture of them.
There is a related article in the Wisconsin State Journal.