Department of Public Safety officers rescued a sleeping Georgetown student covered by smoldering bedding materials two weeks ago and extinguished a small fire in an Alumni Square drain the next day.

According to David Morrell, vice president for university safety, the student was sleeping in his seventh-floor McCarthy Hall residence hall room at about 9:00 a.m. on March 31 while a comforter covering him smoldered and nearly burst into flames. The room filled with smoke, setting off an automatic fire alarm at DPS headquarters.

Morrell said that he did not know how the comforter began to smolder in the first place and added that McCarthy had not been evacuated.

Two DPS officers were dispatched to the room, opened the door and “saw the room was full of smoke,” Morrell said. They awoke the student and extinguished the smoldering materials, he added.

“Clearly the student involved was very fortunate and we’re all pleased that there were no injuries as a result of this,” he said.

According to Morrell, another DPS officer extinguished a small fire in a drain outside Alumni Square at about 3:40 p.m. on April 1.

“It was so small that I’m not sure you could even call it a fire,” he said.

A DPS incident summary said that the origin of the fire was “determined to be a gasoline spill from a maintenance storage closet.”

The spill was “dissipated and cleaned with a chemical,” it said.

No injuries were reported in that incident.

– HOYA staff writer Fred Lestina contributed to this report