For students off to university the last thing they will be thinking of will be fire safety. Shared accommodation such as university halls of residence and privately-owned student accommodation is considered vulnerable and much more likely to have a fire, mainly due to unattended cooking, cigarettes or candles.
Or course halls of residence these days are designed and built to a high standard and must comply with the latest building regulations and in addition have all the relevant fire precautions including:
- Means of fire detection by heat or smoke detectors.
- Means of raising an alarm manually.
- Means of escape, accompanied by emergency lighting and suitable signage.
- Means of extinguishing a fire by fire extinguishers, fire hoses or sprinklers.
The greatest fire risk generally arises from unattended cooking. An unattended pan on a stove is an accident waiting to happen, and it can happen very quickly. Ironically if not correctly trained the provision of fire extinguishers can make matters worse, a fast jet of water aimed into a pan fire is likely to spread the fat and the flames very quickly onto surrounding surfaces or even people.
A hob really needs watching carefully, especially when preparing anything with fats and should never be left unattended when switched on, but with a student’s habit of late-night cooking this is easier said than done!
Full blown fires in student accommodation are quite rare and the more usual event is smoke from a toaster or perhaps food burning whilst cooking. In many circumstances this would only cause at worst a small local fire that could be dealt with by the student by opening windows and wafting a tea towel around. However, it’s inevitable that some kitchen doors will be left open while cooking. Although kitchen doors will most certainly have automatic door closers and intumescent strips edging the door, students will undoubtedly wedge the door open to be sociable and for their convenience. In doing so this allows the smoke generated to escape into common areas such as corridors where the smoke detectors are sited. This can at best be an annoyance to all other students in the block and at worst triggering the main smoke alarm potentially causing evacuation. If a fire alarm has been triggered, automatically calling the fire brigade, there is the further cost implication of call out charges. Whether the cost should fall on the university, the students or the public purse is I’m sure an on-going debate. Despite false alarms, fires can still occur and students can be injured by the fires they cause. It is not just the safety of the students at stake but the cost of refurbishment, loss of valuable books, computers and lecture notes.
Technology can come to the rescue. Rather than relying on the student to switch the hob off or repeated checks ensuring that kitchen doors aren’t wedged open, there are devices that can do the job automatically. Such as count down timers to switch the hob off after a predetermined period of time or kitchen door alarms that once triggered will only silence by closing the door
The universities take a dim view of students who tamper with this type of equipment, and it is important that measures such as protective cages and anti-tamper fixings are used to prevent students from seeking to compromise the alarm, either deliberately, or perhaps in ignorance of its potential lifesaving function.
Technically these are not false alarms they are preventable alarms but again still part of the debate above. Fire alarms are for the many not the few and preventing the fire starting in the first place is a much better idea.