This morning around 8:30 a.m., a fire broke out on the roof of the new Tiger Stadium. The building was designed by LaBella and Populous and has been under construction by Pike Construction Services since mid-April. According to a Henrietta Fire Department Facebook post, “At 8:30 this morning, Henrietta Fire received multiple calls for explosions… Upon arrival, crews confirmed flames from the roof.”

Once there, the fire department evacuated employees from the building, put up the tower ladder (a tall ladder on the back of their fire engine) and extinguished the fire within 20 minutes. Two employees were reported injured, and one was transported to the hospital with “moderate to severe injuries.”

"The cause of the fire is still under investigation," says Scott Goodman, battalion chief of the Henrietta Fire District. “We have some leads,” he stated. “There was a generator- there’s a lot of combustibles up there, naturally, with the roofing. You had generators, you got the tar and you got the foam plastic for the insulation, so we’re going through each one of those to try to determine how it started.” He said the fire department will be conducting interviews to try to get a better picture of what may have happened. Mark Cochlach, the Henrietta Fire Chief, also said the fire may have been caused by a flaw with equipment on the roof deck.

Goodman said that RIT calls the fire department directly instead of going through slower channels. He also stated that — as far as he knows — construction will not be delayed due to the fire. The fire department took care not to impede the process, even allowing the workers to resume work on the first floor, as they were working with time-sensitive concrete on that level.

Goodman also mentioned that a drone that went up during surveillance of the damage was owned by RIT security, not the fire department. “I guess everybody here has to do their own little report,” he commented.

Kat Peller, a second year mechanical engineering student, expressed surprise at hearing about the fire. Peller stated, “You don’t expect to see something like this so early in the morning… they are working on a lot of construction.”

So far, RIT has released two statements regarding the fire: one stating an incident had occurred at the construction site and thus the D lot would be closed, and another mentioning the fire, the construction worker hospitalization and the investigation into the cause of the incident. Both stressed that campus operations would be continuing as normal.