Update: 3:50 p.m.: Illini Tower’s building management is working with inspection personnel to correct the situation following Tuesday’s fire, according to a media update from the Champaign Fire Department. Costs due to the fire are estimated to be around $5,000.

Residents of Illini Tower were immediately evacuated after firefighters arrived on the scene at 4:26 p.m. The basement’s trash chute collection dumpster has since been confirmed as the fire’s original source.

Residents were allowed back into Illini Tower’s cafeteria at 5:06 p.m. as firefighters continued to extinguish pockets of fire that extended beyond the trash chute. After all fires had been extinguished, the sprinkler and fire alarm systems were fully reset. The trash rooms were then locked on all floors, and residents were allowed back onto the upper floors of the building.

The strike of the last pocket of fire was recorded at 7:57 p.m., and all firefighter units left the scene by 8:10 p.m.

As a fire prevention lesson, building occupants should “Be certain that smoking materials are fully extinguished prior to disposing of them in the trash,” according to the CFD report.

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The Champaign Fire Department responded to a fire at Illini Tower, 409 E. Chalmers St., on Tuesday afternoon.

The sixth floor trash room’s alarm had been activated, and firefighters found in the basement that a dumpster, which fed into the trash chute, was on fire. The sprinkler activated and put the fire out, but the dumpster was still smoldering.

The firefighters put the dumpster outside, and they then ventilated the building because the smoke traveled up the chute onto the floors.

“As we were doing that, we kept encountering smoke in places that we had already ventilated,” said Glen Daniels, fire captain at the Champaign Fire Department. “We found a small rag that was still burning that was stuck in the trash chute, we removed that, continued ventilating and then discovered that there was actually trash at the first floor level that was between the trash chute liner and the outside wall of the trash chute — a place where trash shouldn’t be — that had caught fire from the metal liner of the trash chute, so at that point we had to cut a whole metal liner out to make sure the fire was fully extinguished.”

Daniels also said the department did not find any evidence of arson but was not able to rule out the possibility that the fire had been set intentionally.