By Karina Martinez-CarterThe Daily Northwestern
Although Northwestern complies with Evanston fire codes in residence halls, one activist hopes to draw attention to factors – such as a lack of sprinklers, smoking in rooms and faulty or disabled alarms – that compromise students’ safety.
Incidents similar to November’s fire in the Evans Scholars house, 721 University Place, prompted Ed Comeau to found the Center for Campus Fire Safety. Comeau, former chief fire investigator for the National Fire Protection Association, began publishing Campus Firewatch, a monthly electronic newsletter, in May 2000.
“Educators did a good job teaching fire safety when students were younger, learning to stop, drop and roll, but that stopped in the third or fourth grade,” Comeau said. “The fire safety message never really matured with the audience, and we really haven’t provided students the information of how to make fire safety decisions when they’re living at college.”
Weinberg freshman Richard Murphy said he doesn’t think more fire safety education is necessary at NU.
“It’s common sense,” he said. “If you hear an alarm, you get out of a building.”
Murphy said he believes dorm fires are low on the list of student concerns, especially because false alarms are so frequent.
“Last week fire alarms went off twice in my dorm, but it’s usually just from the kitchen,” he said. “People hear alarms and they’re not thinking there’s a fire.”
The Office of Risk Management conducts drills once every quarter in each residence hall and inspects them twice per year, said Mark Mitchell, manager of safety and loss prevention.
Students also are not allowed to have certain appliances, lamps or hanging decorations in their rooms.
NU electricians test fire alarms on a regular basis, as prescribed by Evanston city codes. Ed Youngquist, the chief electrician on NU’s Evanston campus, said his office also gets calls to fix alarms that have been tampered with.
“Unfortunately, it happens quite a lot,” he said. “I think the reasons (students tamper with them) run the gamut, but most of the time I think it’s because the alarms have gone off for one reason or another and students find them annoying.”
Murphy said he hadn’t heard of people disabling fire alarms, but he had heard stories of people “doing stupid things.”
“Last Friday at 3:30 in the morning we all had to evacuate because someone decided to light a piece of paper on fire,” Murphy said. “The guy was drunk, surprisingly.”
Comeau said fire codes for college buildings often are too lax, putting students at risk. His goal is to make students, parents and university officials focus on fire safety.
“An analogy is Internet connection,” Comeau said. “There are no codes mandating it, but every single dorm room in the country has it because the market demanded it, and we want that to happen with fire safety.”
Reach Karina Martinez-Carter at [email protected].
