Students living in dorms may have noticed fewer fire alarms this year.
Over the summer, University staff worked closely with the Bowling Green fire department to update and reprogram the fire alarm system that is in place in all dormitories.
According to the News Herald of Dec. 29, 2015, there were at least 117 deaths due to fires reported in 2015, so the University takes fire alert systems very seriously.
The new system allows for a more streamlined approach to fire evacuations. Originally, if an alarm was to go off in an individual’s room, the entire building would have to evacuate. Now, the system will only evacuate the building once two alarms detect a fire.
“The University administration, myself and the alarm companies worked together to devise a system that is in compliance with the Ohio fire code, that allows us to not dump the building for what we call nuisance alarms,” Bowling Green Fire Chief Tom Sanderson said.
Those nuisance alarms are cases that would not be classified as emergencies by Ohio Fire Code. Sanderson recalled that over the years there became an abundance of these nuisance alarms that would be a result of someone using hairspray, burning popcorn or running the shower too long.
Yet what students had a problem with in the last system was that no matter the cause of these alarms, the entire dormitory would be evacuated.
Part of what made this so concerning for the fire department is the fact that over the years the alarms became so frequent that people began to simply ignore them.
“Complacency was one of the big concerns, and a big impact on safety. And it is exactly what people say. If they are not evacuating because they assume it’s a false alarm, and it’s not, that’s a problem. So if we can reduce the amount of false alarms we can minimize the complacency and improve safety for all students,” Sanderson said.
The new alarm system is actually not a new system for the state. The National Fire Protection Association allows for this kind of programming, yet the technology was different for each dormitory and was therefore harder for this system to be adopted in previous years.
Although it is still early in the academic year, Director of Residence Life Sarah Waters believes that they are already seeing a difference in one key area.
“The one area that we are seeing a difference in is the amount of calls that we are receiving. In past years, even this early, we would see several calls from parents of students asking what was wrong with the fire alarms. Yet this year is completely different,” she said.
