Fire drills scaled down

Emergency tests are better when smaller, official says

By Morgan Steger
The Collegian

Five years have passed since Fresno State students and faculty last experienced a campus-wide fire drill, said David Moll, Fresno State’s director of public safety.

Moll said campus-wide fire drills are no longer used as a means of testing Fresno State’s emergency preparedness because drills of that scale are simply too large to evaluate.

He said the confusion that ensues as students and faculty vacate every building on campus makes it impossible for his personnel to check factors such as whether or not all alarms sounded and all emergency exits worked.

Besides the difficulty inherent in evaluating the success of a campus-wide drill, Moll said arranging the date and time of such a drill would be a logistical nightmare. He said drill organizers would “have to check with everybody who had a class at that time” because they wouldn’t want the drill to interrupt any previously scheduled tests or class presentations.

Instead of holding full-campus drills, Moll said smaller fire drills are held regularly on different sections of campus.

Fire drills are required by law and thus held regularly in the dorms, the Student Health Center, University High School buildings and in the childcare centers on campus, Moll said. Fire drills are also held regularly in the Henry Madden Library, he said.

Moll said drills are not required in the other buildings on campus but the university stages small drills periodically in various locations to test emergency evacuation procedures. Moll said one such drill occurred July 27 in the Joyal building, and another was planned for this semester but he did not say which buildings it would affect.

Moll said he prefers smaller-scale drills because they offer a better means of testing emergency procedures.

“We do it in little sections to make sure that everything is happening right,” he said.

If an actual emergency were to occur on campus, any critical evacuation directions would be disseminated to students and staff through AM radio channel 1040.

According to Fresno State’s Emergency Procedures Manual. Anyone who did not have immediate access to an AM radio would be able to get directions from campus safety personnel and building emergency coordinators, Moll said.

The Emergency Procedures Manual states that the job of emergency coordinators is to oversee and assist in the evacuation of the building they work in, in the case of an emergency. Moll said police and emergency coordinators “would yell out instructions” to those gathered around them.

Steve Martinez, director of environmental health, said there is at least one emergency coordinator for each building on campus, and often an alternate so one is always present in the event of an actual evacuation or drill. Martinez said he wasn’t responsible for providing the identity of the emergency coordinators to faculty and that it was up to each department and building to make sure that information was made available to those within its jurisdiction.

Besides providing others with evacuation orders g from AM 1040, emergency coordinators are also a critical part of any evacuation process because they are among the 50 to 60 people on campus, not including campus safety personnel, who are trained to use Life Sliders to evacuate people with disabilities, Moll said. Life Sliders are toboggan-like apparatuses used to move those with disabilities down a stairwell to safety.

Moll said Life Sliders are located near the top of the designated disabled-use stairwell in each multistory building on campus. He said the sliders cannot be accessed by anyone who has not been trained to use them because they are locked in cabinets, which can only be opened by those who carry the correct key, such as the emergency coordinators. Moll said it is necessary to keep the Life Sliders under lock and key to prevent theft and improper use.

The safe evacuation of the campus in the event of an emergency isn’t the only topic covered by the Emergency Procedures Manual. The pamphlet also says Fresno State could be used to house evacuees of a region-wide disaster, providing the campus itself was not damaged. Moll said any evacuees congregating on campus would be housed in the North or South Gyms. But the Save Mart Center cannot yet be used to house people in the aftermath of a local disaster because it has not been added to Fresno County’s Emergency Operations Plan, Moll said.

If Fresno State were to be used as a shelter, Moll said cots, blankets and other supplies would be removed from storage in university housing in order to meet the needs of displaced people. Though Fresno State would provide shelter and bedding, Moll said the provision of food and other resources would have to be handled in conjunction with the county, the Salvation Army and the Red Cross.

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