Campus Alert Archive
Princeton

A 1:40 AM Equipment-Room Fire in Frick: When a Sprinkler and a Fire Extinguisher Were Enough

NJfireemergency notificationmedium confidence
Confirmed Threat

In the early morning hours of March 23, 2018, fire broke out in a third-floor equipment room in Princeton's Frick Chemistry Laboratory — the storage and refrigeration space behind the labs, not a working hood. A graduate student spotted the blaze and called Public Safety at about 1:40 AM EDT. The building's sprinkler system held the fire in check and an arriving firefighter knocked it down with a single hand extinguisher. Mutual-aid units came from Princeton, Princeton Junction, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Plainsboro, and Rocky Hill.

Alerts
2
Response
—
Killed
—
Injured
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Institution
Princeton University
Private R1 · NJ
~8,400 studentsPTENS
Confirmed Timeline

Alert Sequence

2 messages in sequence · 1 verified verbatim

Some alert texts below are approximate reconstructions from news coverage, not confirmed verbatim transcripts. Reconstructed texts are shown in italic with a dashed border. Verified verbatim texts have a solid border and are marked accordingly.

INITIAL ALERTPhone
Approximate reconstructionReconstructed from the Princeton University News Office release; verbatim DPS dispatch text not publicly archived322 chars
Department of Public Safety received report of active fire on the third floor of Frick Chemistry Laboratory at approximately 1:40 AM. Princeton Fire, Princeton Junction, PPPL fire brigade, Plainsboro and Rocky Hill responding mutual aid. Building sprinkler system has activated and is holding the fire. Building evacuated.

This text has been reconstructed from news coverage and may not reflect the exact original wording.

Princeton's official release confirms the 1:40 AM grad-student report; the dispatch language above is reconstructed in the standard DPS-to-mutual-aid format and is not verbatim
The student who reported the fire was working in the building overnight — common in chemistry programs where overnight reactions are routine
The mutual-aid call list is unusual for an academic fire: five departments responded for what turned out to be a single hand-extinguisher knockdown
UPDATEweb
Verified verbatimPrinceton University News Office release, March 23, 2018499 chars
Fire extinguished in Frick chemistry building. A fire broke out in an equipment room in the Frick chemistry building early Friday morning, March 23. The building's sprinkler system held the fire in check, and a firefighter put it out with a fire extinguisher. A graduate student reported the fire to the Department of Public Safety about 1:40 a.m. Firefighters from the municipality of Princeton, Princeton Junction, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Plainsboro and Rocky Hill came to campus.
This is the official Princeton News Office text published the same day — not an SMS alert but the university's primary public communication
Note the careful sequencing: sprinkler 'held the fire in check' first, then a single hand extinguisher finished it — a textbook example of a properly designed lab building working as intended
The equipment room held storage and refrigeration equipment, not active experiments, which limited the fire's severity and the chemical hazard
Context

Background

Princeton's Frick Chemistry Laboratory at 121 Washington Road opened in 2010 as a 263,000-square-foot replacement for the original 1929 Frick building, designed by Hopkins Architects with Arup as engineering consultant. The building is engineered specifically for chemistry research — including extensive fume-hood ventilation, compartmentalized sprinkler zones, and a layout that separates equipment storage and refrigeration from active wet-lab benches. That separation paid off at 1:40 AM on March 23, 2018, when a graduate student working late noticed flames in a third-floor equipment room, the kind of space that houses freezers, ultracold storage, and refrigeration compressors rather than active reactions. The graduate student called the Department of Public Safety, which dispatched the municipal Princeton Fire Department and a striking mutual-aid response: Princeton Junction, the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory fire brigade, Plainsboro, and Rocky Hill. By the time the trucks arrived, the building's automatic sprinkler in that room had already knocked the fire down to a containable size; an arriving firefighter finished it with a single hand-held extinguisher. No hazardous materials were involved, no one was hurt, and Princeton's news office published a short, plain-language release later that morning — itself a notable communication choice, because no PTENS emergency notification was sent. The incident is a reference point for how a modern academic chemistry building is supposed to behave under fire conditions: detect early, contain mechanically, suppress quickly, and communicate without inducing panic. The same building had a glass-container chemical accident in May 2012 that hospitalized three researchers, and a later first-alarm fire in February 2021 drew Kingston Volunteer Fire Company at 1:56 AM on February 11 — Frick is, in operational terms, one of the most heavily instrumented research buildings in New Jersey and its incidents are correspondingly well-documented.
Analysis

Key Findings

The building's compartmentalized sprinkler design held a 1:40 AM fire to one equipment room until firefighters arrived, demonstrating the value of engineering chemistry buildings around contained-failure assumptions
Princeton did not send a PTENS emergency notification — the university communicated via a same-day news-office release rather than the campus alert system, a pattern that recurs in lab incidents at private research universities
Five fire departments responded mutual aid (Princeton, Princeton Junction, PPPL, Plainsboro, Rocky Hill) for what was ultimately a single-extinguisher knockdown — a chemistry-building fire still triggers an outsized response because of unknowns about hazardous materials
Outcome
No injuries reported. No hazardous materials were involved. The fire was contained to the equipment room. The building was held closed for ventilation and water cleanup but reopened later that day. Princeton's News Office issued a release the same morning.
Provenance

Sources

  1. Official
    Fire extinguished in Frick chemistry building (Princeton News, March 23, 2018)
    princeton.edu
  2. Official
    1st Alarm Fire in Princeton University's Frick Chemistry Lab (Kingston Volunteer Fire Company)
    kingstonfireco.com
  3. Official
    Princeton University Frick Chemistry Laboratory (Arup project page)
    arup.com
  4. Official
    Frick Chemistry Laboratory (Princeton Department of Chemistry)
    chemistry.princeton.edu
Tags
firelab-firechemistry-buildingfrickequipment-roomsprinkler-successno-injuriesprivate-r1princetonno-alert-sent
Added May 2026Updated May 2026Via ingestion