If you live on campus, through the course of the school year, you will likely have a fire drill in your dorm.
When the fire alarm goes off, you might take the time to grab your coat, maybe your class notes to study while you sit outside, or stop to wait at your friend’s room to walk down the stairs together.
According to a Sept. 23 Kernel article, your dorm room could be completely engulfed in flames in three minutes or less. So taking your time is the wrong idea.
Fire in buildings, whether over 40 years old like Haggin Hall or 23 floors like the Kirwan and Blanding towers, are serious matters, and fire drills are important tools to use to save your life in a real emergency.
If you’re the one looking for a warning from your resident adviser about the upcoming drill, or you’re one of the students passing along insider information about when to “conveniently†be away from a dorm room, you might think you are helping out your buddies, but you are putting them at risk.
Being prepared in an emergency situation is the best way to survive a disaster. People need to know where the emergency exits and flotation devices are on a plane in case of a crash. Knowing where the safest place in your house is in the event of a tornado is useful information.
Being aware of floor maps and fire procedures in your dorm room in the unlikely, but possible, event of a dorm fire are useful bits of information. Being prepared is the best policy.
Also, breaking fire safety dorm rules like using candles and putting too many posters on your walls are careless decisions. This will only contribute to your safety risk in the event of a fire.
On Sept. 22, the UK Fire Marshal’s Office set two dorm room models on fire as part of a fire safety demonstration for students. This demonstration was extremely helpful in showing students the seriousness of dorm fires, and was able to give students who watched the demonstration a better idea of what a fire is really like.
Fire drills, when taken as a light-hearted matter, are not helpful tools to help students become more prepared for dorm fires. Showing students first hand what a dorm fire looks like is useful. Maybe students will remember the image of the charred, burning room the next time a fire alarm goes off.
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