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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