National Fire Protection Association Blog: We all know the importance of fire prevention; it's something fire safety educators and fire officials think about daily. But what about today's youth? What are their thoughts on fire safety? Are we doing enough to raise awareness of the dangers, and have we provided them with enough tools and resources to get involved and share information with their friends?
7 comments:
My one question about this article is what they mean by “students are participating that pose fire risks.” Besides smoking, what do adults think we do? I digress, I think that it is important to educate college students about fires. Recently, there was a fire in Morewood Garden, and I know many people who live in that dormitory. Most people did not evacuate the building for a good ten to twenty minutes because they thought it was a drill, and there was no announcement that it was a real fire. The only reason many of my friends left the building was because they had class to go to. Only once they exited the building did they see two fire trucks and then realize it was a real fire. That could have ended terribly if the fire was large enough to consume the building because of how many people ignored the alarms.
In this comment, I will assume that they're talking about "your average college student who doesn't work in a scene shop with a room full of sawdust". Honestly, I don't think about fire safety all that often. My stove is a range, my candles are in jars, and smoking isn't really an issue for me. I agree with Sasha; what do they think we do? Burn popcorn? Because adults do that too. Granted, I have a few friends who like to set things on fire, but like those are isolated cases, and taking a lighter away from a pyromaniac isn't my job. I could see this being about fire drills and exit patterns, but instead it seems to skate around young adults smoking. Maybe, if we didn’t have so many fake fire drills, then we’d be more receptive to them. When I was living in Donner, we had them all the time, to test the system. However, when it actually went off at 8am, in the shower before Studiocraft, I didn’t leave the bathroom, assuming it was a drill, because we had them all the time. I was then yelled at by my RA to get out and forced to stand outside in the cold with only a towel. You want kids to respond to fire alarms? Have less of them!
I was somewhat involved recently the fire that Sasha mentioned in Morewood Gardens. I was eating at The Underground (beneath Morewood Gardens) and I had just ordered my food. I heard the fire alarm go off and then one of the employees said, "It's probably just a alarm test, we should be fine." I agreed because there are monthly tests and it was probably time for one. Then one of the managers walked out and said, "It's real this time, everyone out." What needs to be done is that there should be sound for the test alarm and a sound for the real alarm so people can distinguish between the two. The only information about how to deal with a fire is the monthly email that there will be a test of the alarm and that we do need to evacuate. I think that is a serious problem. Fire safety is something that no one wants to talk about, but once there is a problem, it is already too late.
Sorry, I'm confused. Were we never confronted with a fire-risk situation before coming to college? The article says that many students are away from home for the first time, so they don't know what kinds of activities may put them at risk of a fire. What? We weren't dead before we came to school. I guess I'm really missing what they might talk about in these fire safety lessons. If it is school specific, that might make sense. For instance, I would like someone to walk me through all of the safety procedures in a shop/theatre environment because there is sawdust and electrics and power tools and other such things. But the average college student in these lessons is going to learn- what? Not to walk away from a burning candle? To make sure they don't put anything dry in the microwave? I'm sorry but these kinds of things really annoy me when they don't have a purpose other than to illuminate common sense.
This article and program do seem to assume that we as young adults are at the point in our lives where fire is all of a sudden an increased risk to us, but outside of smoking candles and cooking, all of which most of us have encountered before college, I don’t really see this new increased risk they are worrying about. I do think fire safety is important at all ages and as these are some of our last few years of formal education, it's a great time to hammer some of the stop drop and roll type points home, but I don’t think that we are especially prone to fire starting because of our age. Katie also made a good point about fire drills. Every time they try to make inconvenient and random fire drills apart of the dorming experience it makes me that much less likely to get up and leave expediently when the alarm is real. Of course, some if not most of that responsibility is on us grown people to care enough to leave a building with an alarm sounding.
I think that this is a very important thing that is happening. First of all, I love reading articles about safety here on the green page. This is because it allow me to stay up to date and very well educated on the safety standards of the industry that I am studying. I feel that it is really important that we, as students, take hold of all of the opportunities that we have to learn more about safety and how to put these safety practices into use in our lives if they were to occur. I think here at Carnegie Mellon University I that we receive a very well rounded safety education no matter what department you are studying in. It worries me that there are other fantastic schools that are out there that are not teach their students this material. Because let us be real for a second, our schools are training us be the world’s next leaders and not educating these next leaders on safety is a mistake.
This is probably the most relatable thing I have read all week. Fire prevention is so important, especially on college campuses where so many students reside side by side and in such close quarters. I remember my third day of college when I forgot to put water in my mac and cheese and I just put the bowl in the microwave. That ended up being such an embarrassing moment because I didn't stop to think that "hey, it needs water". Having my room smoke detector go off and smelling that burned pasta in the air made me question how important I think fire safety is. Luckily nothing serious happened, but if it did, it would have been for my lack of knowledge and carelessness. I hope that more and more students being to take interest in the safety of themselves and the people around them by getting educated in the fundamentals of fire safety. Being in technical theatre and having to work with tools, lights, and certain machines, I know that before I being working, I will educate myself as much as I can in fire prevention and spread the message to others who don't seem to quite get that our safety is important and that most of us would like to keep our eyebrows, not have them singed off.
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