By Amira Benjamin and Daniel Opasinis

Students were evacuated from the Podium (POD) building at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) due to a fire alarm set off on Thursday evening. 

A student told The Eyeopener  their class was first interrupted at around 6:10 p.m. when inspectors came in looking for a leak. At around 6:30 p.m. the fire alarms went off as water began to pour from the third floor to the second. 

Toronto Fire Services (TFS) said they were called to the lower ground floor of POD, where the fire alarm was activated, according to a TFS spokesperson. TMU maintenance staff bypassed the alarm and the firefighters left shortly after.

According to TFS no other buildings were impacted.

TMU staff were seen attempting to stop the leak on a third-floor terrace facing Nelson Mandela Walk.  

Some students in the building thought this might have been a drill.

Robin Sehdev, a fourth-year business management student, was hosting a debate club meeting on the fourth floor of the building when the fire alarm went off.

“I thought it was routine at first, because sometimes we’ve had fake, false alarms. But then it kept going for like, 10 minutes and then it started getting faster. And [was] like, ‘Wait, guys, maybe this is actually a credible threat,'” he said.

Oindrilla Ray, a fourth-year English student, was with some of her friends on the third floor before hearing the alarms and leaving the POD building. 

“Pretty much, like, five, seven minutes after sitting down, the alarms went off. We honestly thought it was like a fake thing,” she said. “But then we actually listened to the alarm and it sounded pretty real. And we saw, like, a lot of people leaving. So we left.”

In a video sent to The Eye, steam—which some students confused as smoke—can be seen flowing outside of what appears to be the second floor of POD. 

This is a developing story.