 "Photo: Shaun Bevan")
A grease fire broke out on the third floor of Building 9 at Pegasus Landing on Tuesday.
Melissa Walsh, a sophomore at Valencia Community College, was frying oil on the stovetop when she noticed smoke coming from the pot. When she removed the lid, flames rose from the pot and ignited recipe cards on top of the smoke catcher, she said. Walsh said she doused the flames with a pot of water that produced a large cloud of smoke and triggered the kitchen smoke detector and sprinklers, she said.
“As soon as the sprinklers went off, I told Sarah, ‘Open all the windows, we need to get the smoke out so it doesn’t start the other part,’” Walsh said. “Right by the kitchen are our two roommates’ doors, and I’m sure they wouldn’t be too pleased if all their crap got wet. So the first thing we did was open every window, turn every fan on — I can’t imagine what our AC bill is going to be like; it was awful.”
Walsh and her roommate, UCF senior and communication major Sarah Wilson, used Mexican blankets, towels and even her own jeans at one point in order to stop the onslaught of pouring water from the sprinklers into their absent roommates’ bedrooms.
“It was ankle-deep water,” Wilson said. “It was ridiculous.”
Wilson said she heard that roughly 50 gallons of water per minute had come out of their sprinklers into the apartment. Police reported water damage to the apartments directly below Walsh and Wilson’s residence on both the second and first floors.
Walsh suffered minor burns to her ankle, hand and thigh, but Wilson was uninjured.
According to the UCF police incident report, when Officer Timothy Isaacs arrived at 5:38 p.m., the fire sprinkler located in the kitchen was still activated and pouring water throughout the kitchen. Approximately 5 minutes later, Orange County Fire Department turned off the sprinklers, according to the report.
“We pretty much just helped set off the sprinkler system and got everything back to normal, but the fire was out when we arrived,” said John Mulhall, information officer for Orange County Fire Rescue.
“Buildings have sprinkler systems to put out fire in a hands-off sort of way because even in the best circumstances, it can take the fire department 3 to 4 minutes to arrive,” Mulhall said. “You never want to leave anything on the stove unattended for any length of time.”
Both residents have been relocated to temporary housing until the damage can be repaired.
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