Ballantine Hall evacuated after alarm pulled

Ballantine Hall was evacuated Wednesday afternoon after a fire alarm was pulled in the building.

Hundreds of students waited outside the building for about 30 minutes while firefighters searched for a source of the smoke in the building.

A Ballantine staff member pulled the alarm on the seventh floor after smelling smoke on the sixth floor, said Bloomington Fire Department Battalion Chief Jeff Kerr said.

Firefighters never found a source of the smoke, Kerr said.

Jessica Jackson said she had just started her criminal justice class on the ground floor when the alarm sounded and her teacher told the class to evacuate the building but not to go home.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said about what she thought when the alarm went off. “Is there a real fire, or is it just a drill?”

Freshman Felicia Adamson said the alarm went off during her class on the third floor. She said she’d heard about the smoke on the sixth floor and was surprised.

“They’ve always been drills,” she said.