The Justice

Brandeis Officer Kimberly Antone and students look ahead at a brushfire sparked by Rosenthal Quad last Tuesday. Danielle Friedman/the Justice

A brushfire broke out for unknown reasons Tuesday afternoon near Rosenthal Quad, Lieutenant William Kresser of the Waltham Fire Department said.

The fire, which officers contained to the hillside between Rosenthal and Usen Hall, started shortly after 3 p.m. and was extinguished by Waltham officers without any damage to buildings. Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan said the fire only lasted a couple of minutes.

"Probably careless disposal of a cigarette," Callahan said. Kresser agreed that was most likely the cause. "There's nothing around [the brush] that's flammable," he said.

Michael Kerns '09, a resident of Rosenthal Quad who witnessed the scene, said smoke rose as high as his dorm.

"There were huge plumes of smoke, and the flames were pretty big," Kerns said.

Public Safety officers notified the fire department of the blaze after alarms in nearby dormitories went off, Callahan said.

Callahan said that recently there have been several fires around campus. "I would suspect that the cause is dry soil conditions and the possibility of the disposal of cigarettes which may have sparked the fires," he wrote in an e-mail last Wednesday.

Only one fire however was recorded in the police log in the last several weeks. According to the log, campus police responded to a brush fire April 23, but found only smoke on a small patch of multch by Pearlman, Brown and Schwartz. Officers extinguished the smoke.

Claire Moses contributed reporting.

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