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St. Cloud State University
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Commentary
Alarms prevent bigger problems
Published:
Thursday, July 17, 2003
While SCSU's lead electrician Herman Gangl was testing the faulty lighting ballast in Atwood Memorial Center Wednesday afternoon, he made an excellent point about fire safety.
The St. Cloud fire chief, Gangl said, does not require that smoke detectors be installed in buildings that already have a heat-activated sprinkling system.
Why, Gangl asked, would anyone want to wait until the fire was here (he gestured toward the ceiling) when it could be caught (he motioned toward the floor) there?
Atwood's Wednesday commotion was caused by the ballast, or transformer, that Gangl was testing. When the transformer overheated earlier in the day, it began to smoke. The smoke immediately set off one of the smoke detectors in the building, which triggered the alarm and allowed all of Atwood's occupants to get out safely. Most of those occupants were soon-to-be SCSU students and their parents, in the midst of orientation for fall semester.
Everyone who was in Atwood experienced the building's evacuation plan in what was thought to be a real emergency. And everything went smoothly.
For this, we can be thankful. That the ballast was a relatively minor and "routine" problem, we can be thankful. That there was no major damage nor injuries, we can be thankful.
We can also be thankful that someone had enough foresight to require that SCSU buildings have both sprinkler systems and smoke detectors.
While perhaps a revolutionary invention, sprinkler systems are not of a preventative nature. They are an emergency attempt to save most of a building if fire breaks out somewhere within the building. They do not, however, warn the building's occupants of danger.
Most people have probably burned toast or have had some other sort of minor kitchen mishap involving smoke. True to form, if their smoke detector is operational - and let us all hope that is is - it lets out an earsplitting shriek that drives everyone bats. How many of us have fanned the air underneath it, frantically trying to get it to shut off? How many of us have cursed out that smoke alarm for doing its job?
It's easy to be frustrated at our smoke detectors over something as mundane as burnt toast. But the fire alarm in Atwood is a lesson in safety; it's a reminder of just how important fire alarm systems are.
If there had been no fire alarm system in Atwood, it's possible something more serious could have resulted from the smoldering ballast. Instead of working on replacing the ballast today, SCSU's maintenance workers might have been contemplating how to fix a fire-damaged section of Atwood.
If "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," SCSU's fire alarms are an invaluable part of safety and security on campus. Wednesday was a reminder that though the occasional false alarm may be an unwelcome annoyance, smoke detectors are installed in campus buildings for a reason.
And they work.
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