Why London fire visited campus twice last week
Sophia Schiefler, Coordinating Editor - UWO Gazette
London Fire Department responds to suspected gas leak on campus at Western University in London, Ont., March 11, 2025. Sophie Bouquillon / GAZETTE
Last week, the London Fire Department visited Western twice. Fire crews responded to a suspected gas leak on Tuesday and returned to an “event” at SSB on Thursday, which some campus community members speculated was a fire.
So what happened on Western University’s campus last week?
At the March 14 Senate meeting Western president Alan Shepard confirmed there was no gasoline involved in either event. He said the outages caused by the incident in the Support Services Building were due to an overheated HVAC system, not a fire.
On Tuesday, Western Special Constable Services issued an AlertWesternU notification, warning the campus community of a suspected natural gas leak in the core area of campus.
But London Fire Department platoon chief manager Jamie Britton explained the “rotten egg smell” likely came from a chemistry lab being decommissioned, and that buildings were evacuated because people likely pulled fire alarms in response to the odour.
Britton said at the time, fire crews had not detected any gas readings on their four-gas monitors.
Shepard confirmed there was a planned chemical release on Tuesday from the Department of Chemistry. On Tuesday, wind gusts between 20 and 40 kilometres per hour cooled temperatures throughout the London region, CTV reported. Shepard said the smell from the lab’s release carried with the wind.
“For some reason, because of the prevailing winds, people thought that there was something going wrong, and it wasn’t,” said Shepard.
The London Fire Department was called back to Western on Thursday after Western Technology Services announced an “event” in the datacentre that caused system outages, including the university’s website and Wi-Fi.
London Fire Department platoon chief Colin Shewell confirmed an extinguishing solution had been released inside the SSB, and WTS restored the affected services by the evening.
Shepard said there had been a suggestion of a potential fire in one of the server rooms but confirmed there had never been a fire. Instead, he explained the HVAC systems overheated, triggering the fire suppression system.
He said the HVAC systems were “at the end of their life spans” and would need to be replaced.
Shepard also described the impact of the Wi-Fi outage on campus.
“For those of you who are my age, or roughly, you can remember a time before internet, but for many people on the campus, it paralyzes you. It sort of paralyzes me. I kept trying to send stuff,” said Shepard.
While last week’s incidents were not connected to gas leaks or fires, there was a confirmed gas leak on campus earlier this winter. On Jan, 16, students, staff and faculty were forced to leave the North Campus Building and the Visual Arts Centre after a construction crew hit a natural gas line on Perth Drive.
There was also a suspected gas leak near the Chemistry Building on Feb. 25, and campus community members were advised to leave the area.
“It’s been a busy week for the London Fire Department at Western,” said Shepard in the meeting. “Yes, we’re getting our money’s worth, as they say.”
