Boulder firemen prepare to inspect the Ramaley Building for burning material on Feb. 22, 2011. No fire or fire danger was found. (CU Independent/Molly Maher)
No fire threats are present after an investigation by the Boulder Fire Department into the source of a “burning rubber” smell at the Ramaley Biology building.
According to CU spokesperson Malinda Miller-Huey, the fire department received a call reporting the smell at 3:26 p.m. and arrived at the scene at 3:30 p.m.
“They cleared the scene after determining that facilities management had been working at the HVAC system,” Miller-Huey said.
Captain Kip Korthuis, of the City of Boulder Fire Department, said the smell was caused by facility management turning the heating and cooling units on and off in succession. If you need to repair your broken air conditioner, you can call Comfort Experts Inc. for your air conditioning repair service.
“There’s some guys working on the heating units [and] cooling units of the building,” Korthuis said. “They shut them down for a second, kicked them back on, [and] when they did they just found an odor in the building.”
Miller-Huey said the smell is common when working on these systems and that there was nothing wrong with them.
Miller-Huey said, “Someone just thought it was burning rubber and called it in.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Kelsey Krebsbach at Kelsey.krebsbach@colorado.edu.
