A male student is still in critical condition after a fire early Tuesday morning gutted his ninth floor Thurston Hall room and kept residents from entering the building for several hours.

Kevin McLaughlin, a 19-year-old freshman from Farmington, Conn., was transported to GW Hospital at about 5 a.m. Tuesday in “very bad” condition with severe burns to the face, arms and hands, fire officials said.

Doctors there were able to stabilize him and re-establish his breathing. He was later transferred via ambulance to the Washington Hospital Center, a facility located at 110 Irving St. NW that has a more “comprehensive” burn unit, fire department spokesman Alan Etter said.

McLaughlin is still listed in critical condition, a hospital spokesperson said Thursday afternoon. Patients in critical care may have unstable vital signs not within normal limits and could be unconscious.

Etter said the blaze started after McLaughlin’s sheets caught on fire from contact with a portable electric grill. He said damage was contained to the room and is estimated at $10,000. The University forbids residents from having grills and some other electric appliances.

Etter, who did not know when the fire started, said trucks and ambulances were dispatched to the nine-story residence hall at 4:49 a.m. A statement given to The Hatchet by University Police and distributed to Thurston residents said a sprinkler in the hall outside McLaughlin’s room prevented the spread of fire beyond McLaughlin’s room, 913.

Though it “performed as designed,” the sprinkler did not activate until fire and UPD officers opened the student’s door. Etter said firefighters were able to quickly extinguish the blaze. One firefighter was briefly hospitalized for smoke inhalation.

The building’s approximately 1,050 students, many of whom were clad in pajamas when they evacuated, were not allowed to re-enter the hall until about 8 a.m. Tuesday. Before that time, students stayed warm in the Marvin Center, Mitchell Theater, Francis Scott Key Hall and other friends’ rooms.

University media relations director Tracy Schario said 15 students in five rooms were not able to re-enter their rooms because of smoke damage and water damage from sprinklers in the hallways. As of Wednesday night, they had not been permitted back to their rooms. The University has made housing arrangements for those students, and a cleanup and repair contractor is working to restore areas affected by the fire.

Students on the ninth floor said they awoke to confusion and pitch-black smoke early Tuesday morning.

“I could see nothing,” freshman Visilis Kyriacou, a Thurston resident, said. “I heard a buzzing sound. I didn’t know where it was coming from.”

“All of a sudden, there was a ridiculous amount of smoke,” said freshman Jay Cowles, one of several ninth floor residents gathered on 20th and F streets immediately following the fire.

Cowles said he saw police knocking down doors and heard people screaming. UPD, Metropolitan Police and firefighters conducted a sweep of the building to make sure all residents were evacuated.

“(University Police) was like, ‘This is not a drill. Get out. Get out now.'”

Cowles, a resident of Room 911, said Room 913 is a quad but that only two people were living there. The room’s other residents were recently kicked out for reasons unknown to Cowles. Schario said two students are assigned to the room, but one is living in another dorm.

U.S. Secret Service officers on 19th Street were the first to see flames in a ninth floor window, Schario said.

“Both UPD and the Secret Service went up to the ninth floor, and then it was the UPD officer who pulled the alarm when they realized what was going on,” Schario said.

Schario said all alarms and bells worked as intended. The activation of the building’s fire alarm sent a signal to UPD, which then notified the fire department that Tuesday’s alarm was a legitimate fire and not a false signal.

The University statement said all Thurston rooms have local, electric smoke detectors, which are tested every week.

“Based upon the fact that these smoke detectors are tested weekly, we have every reason to believe that this smoke detector should have worked, although we have not had an opportunity to speak with the (hospitalized) student to confirm this,” the statement read.

Tuesday marked the second time this month that scores of emergency personnel swarmed Foggy Bottom to extinguish a large blaze. On March 1, a fire sparked by an idle cigarette in an area retirement center led to the hospitalization of two elderly people.

-Jeff Baum, Sarah Brown and Jake Sherman contributed to this report.