Gallaudet Dorms Evacuated After Chemical Scare

About 100 Gallaudet University students were evacuated from two dormitory buildings this morning because of a chemical scare that later proved unfounded.

D.C. police and fire crews were called to the school for the deaf, off 800 Florida Avenue NE, at 10:15 a.m., after a maintenance worker discovered several suspicious-looking containers in the duct work above an unoccupied room at the Ballard Hall-North dormitory.

Most dormitory residents were at class, but those who remained were cleared out of Ballard Hall-North and Ballard-West as a precaution. Authorities said the material turned out to be six small boxes of commercially available plant fertilizer and pesticide, plus a light bulb, that were apparently hidden above a second-floor room.

People were allowed back into the buildings soon after the authorities arrived.

Assistant D.C. Police Chief Patrick Burke said investigators are considering "myriad" possibilities including that the theory that someone who was growing marijuana may have stored the containers.

Alan Etter, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, said the evacuations, and the sizeable presence of emergency vehicles and personnel, was appropriate given the heightened level of concern surrounding the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. "There's a fine line between prudence and panic," he said.