Sure enough there was a girl leaning outside her window with black smoke just pouring out over her head. Just then some guy ran up the stairs and said, "Hey guys it's a real fire, a girl just got through throwing a chair out of the window!"Įveryone left the lobby where the cafeteria was and went outside to the front. After getting into the lobby, me and my friends were about to go to SAGA for lunch (Soviet Attempt to Gag America). The fire alarm went off and, as always, down the steps we went. It happened around lunch time, I was in my room on the 9th floor. I remember the day of the Sander Hall fire on the 6th floor (I think) that December day in 1981. But the view to the south was spectacular! I think UC missed a fundraising opportunity by not raffling chances to push the detonator for the demolition. I thought I was going to die.Īnd if anyone had a class on Monday afternoon, he had to leave an hour early because at least one of the three elevators was used for laundry, and another was inevitably out of service. How can I forget the almost nightly bomb scares that some fools called in to watch a thousand people in their jammies evacuate the building? After one cleared, my roommate, Randy Hoover, and I decided to run up the 20 flights of stairs to our suite. As I recall, the Student Senate had argued before the "co-ed" dorm was built that it would not, effectively, be suitable for human habitation. I was one of the first residents of Sander in 1971. Fortunately, my sis knew a fellow who collected news footage and had him put together a VHS tape of all the news stories back to back so I got to see it from every angle later. Except, I forgot that I had rewound it before starting to shoot new scenes, so I taped over the great footage I got of the building going down. Then I shot a few minutes of the aftermath. In a few minutes, I rewound the video and checked it out a few times to make sure I got it. I stuck the camera in the bag that I was very happy I'd brought with me. And when that thing came down, and that HUGE cloud went up and moved directly toward us, it was pandemonium. Ladies were dressed in fancy clothes and hats. I watched it fall, and recorded it, from a fairly close perspective near the church. There had been warnings that week that there might have been asbestos used in Sander. I took my 8mm video camera, and a large garbage bag because I figured there might be some dust. A neighbor of mine worked for the construction company involved and got me a "back stage" pass. When they dumped that sand down the trash chute on Sunday morning, it smacked the bend at my room and sent up a cloud of dust that got everybody up and out the door! Upon investigating further, we figured out that the guys upstairs - on 19 or 20 - had had a BEACH PARTY the night before, complete with baby pools filled with sand. The smoke detectors then went off and we evacuated, as per usual. I stepped out of the room and there was this sandy, dusty stuff floating around in the air. As I sat there that morning I heard this odd "whoooooooooshing" noise and then a huge SMACK as something hit the bend. The RA rooms were next to the trash chute, and my room on the 6th floor was right at the bend where the trash came down and changed course, or was slowed down, before making its way to the dumpsters. We had a GREAT group of folks, a crazy group, which was needed because those were crazy times. I lived in Sander freshman year, 1975-76, then returned as an RA for 1977-78 and 78-79.
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