Around 18 Adams House Students Lose Dorm Rooms for Rest of Year After Fire

More than a dozen Harvard College students will not return to their dorm rooms for the rest of the academic year after an early Sunday morning fire in Adams House, administrators told students and staff hours after the incident.

By early Sunday afternoon, about 18 students whose suites sustained the most severe smoke and water damage were told they could not return to their room for weeks.

“We’re writing because you are a resident in a suite that was directly impacted by smoke and/or water during last night’s fire,” wrote Alexander Reed, Adams House’s interim resident dean, in a 12:30 p.m. message.

“Unfortunately, this means that you will not be able to return to your suite until restoration work has been completed, which may take several weeks,” he added.

In a separate email to House tutors, which was obtained by The Crimson, Adams House Faculty Deans made the timeline explicit: the affected students would not be able to return to their rooms for “the rest of the academic year.”

Administrators have since placed displaced students in available rooms across Adams, DeWolfe, and the Inn, which is currently housing Eliot House residents. Some affected students said their suitemates were split across locations.

The fire, which broke out shortly after 2 a.m. in a fourth-floor suite in Randolph Hall, forced more than 150 students to evacuate overnight.

Firefighters from the Cambridge Fire Department responded to a fire alarm at 2:11 a.m. and arrived to find smoke billowing from a fourth-floor window. Crews raised a ladder to the room and removed a mattress that had caught fire as police shut down part of Mount Auburn street.

Students were initially directed to gather in the Adams dining hall, but around 3 a.m., tutors told residents to seek alternate housing for the night as crews worked to clear the building. Most were allowed to return later that morning, except those in rooms directly below the fourth-floor suite where the fire broke out.

Sprinklers triggered by the fire sent water cascading into nearby rooms, compounding the damage. Some rooms near the fire’s origin remained without power as of late Sunday night.

For some students, the damage extended beyond housing.

Rauf Nawaz ’28, an international student from Pakistan and one of the displaced students, said water from the sprinkler system soaked his passport and visa, leaving them unusable just weeks before planned travel home.

“My entire passport and visa is soaked — and it’s damaged to the extent that it is not usable — and I have to travel back home in the next month or so, right after exams, and I’m just really stressed as to what I’m supposed to do,” Nawaz said.

Nawaz, a former Crimson News editor, said he was relocated to the Inn, but described the College’s response as lacking substance. He said a Sunday evening meeting with Harvard College Dean David J. Deming, Associate Dean of Students Lauren E. Brandt ’01, and Adams Faculty Deans was largely perfunctory.

“We went there and, it was just ‘oh come have pizza and sorry this happened,’ and that’s it,” Nawaz said. “There was no information shared with us. There was no discussion or anything.”

Nawaz added that administrators told him there would be another meeting the following day, but did not share further details.

College spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote that administrators “remain in direct contact with students and their families” and that students should reach out to House staff with questions.

Other displaced students struck a more positive tone. Jay Sweitzer-Shalit ’28, Nawaz’s suitemate, wrote in a statement that he was “very impressed” by the speed of the response from tutors and Adams administrators, many of whom were on site throughout the day.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation, and no injuries were reported.

—Staff writer Shawn A. Boehmer can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at shawnb.18. Follow him on X @ShawnBoehmer.

—Staff writer Claire A. Michal can be reached at [email protected] and on Signal at ClaireMichal.154.