The fire took place in a new freshman
dormitory at Seton Hall University in northern New Jersey. The dormitory
housed 600 of the university’s 10,000 students.
Three students died and 60 dormitory
residents were injured. Two dorm residents allegedly caused the fire while
playing around with matches. The fire alarms did go off, but their signals
were largely ignored by the students. A large number of prank false alarms
had sounded in the previous three months.
