Throughout this semester, students may have noticed an increase in fire alarms, both full-building alarms, when the alarm sounds in the entire building, and alarms in individual dorm rooms. According to Assistant Director of the Department of Public Safety John Ritchie, there were “540 fire alarms in the calendar year of 2014. Those are not fires, those are fire alarms. If I look at it this year, you’re at 589 and we still have a couple weeks to go.”
The 2015 fire alarm count has already surpassed the 2014 year end count of 540 by 49, with several weeks remaining in the year.
When asked if DPS has been looking into the increase of fire alarms on campus, Ritchie replied, “The University has a fire marshal, so anything with the fire system, the fire marshal will take care of it. If there’s a significant increase or change in numbers, the fire marshal will look into causes and effects. What we [DPS] like to do is look at repeat locations. If we go to the same place more than two, three, four times, especially in a short period of time, then maybe there is a flaw within the system or a specific resident needs to be educated on a few things.”
Ritchie continued to explain the fire system on campus. “When we talk about fire alarms, we have room detectors and full-building alarms. We don’t get too many full-building alarms. When the whole building alarm goes off, it takes a common area detector to activate to set that off. We have had 13 this year, so 13 this academic year since September.”
Ritchie added that in 2014, there were 12 full-building fire alarms on campus.
According to Richie these alarms almost always have an identifiable cause. “I would say 99.9 percent of the time we find the cause for the alarm. It’s not too often we actually say ‘unknown cause.’ Once in a while, we find that it is a flaw with the system; you can’t have 86 buildings on campus and not expect a little glitch in the system.”
While reasons for the alarms may vary, most alarms seem to be the result of non-malicious activity. “Baby powder, shower steam, you name it — the whole nine yards. Causes for fire alarms range from somebody opening a bag of popcorn, hair dryers, hair straighteners, spray on deodorants, air fresheners and general cooking,” Ritchie explained.
Other factors one might not think of also can affect the fire system to go off on campus. According to Ritchie, dust from construction, specifically from the Leslie C. Quick Jr. Recreation Complex, as well as ventilation systems that also set the alarms off. Ventilation systems shut down, and in the colder months, they turn back on and blow dust out which sets off the alarm.
According to Ritchie, DPS understands that these alarms are more often than not harmless. However, they respond knowing fully that any alarm could potentially mean a dangerous fire. Ritchie noted that this year, Fairfield has experienced only two fires. These two fires consisted of one grease fire and a microwave fire, both of which occurred at the Townhouses.
Ritchie attributed the slight increase in the occurrence of fire alarms to a simple numbers game. He explained that as the school grows and accepts more students, these numbers will increase. More students will mean more cooking in the lounges, cooking in dorms, spraying too much air freshener, burning food in microwaves and all the other various things that Ritchie mentioned could set off these fire alarms. Ritchie stated, “Look at how many residents we have this year versus last year, well statistically you’re going to go up in incidents. You got more people doing their hair, more bags of popcorn.”
The 2014 Fire Safety Report for Fairfield University also mentioned a recent improvement to fire safety, in the form of installing fire suppression hood units over stovetops in all residential halls and apartments.
While these alarms are no reason for concern according to Ritchie, the National Fire Protection Association holds that fire safety is becoming a larger draw for students looking at colleges. Parents are looking at fire statistics for individual colleges. The NFPA mentions that proper fire safety and prevention are key aspects of a safe college campus. They state that, “In 2009-2013, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated annual average of 3,870 structure fires in dormitories, fraternities, sororities and barracks.”
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