At the corner of Binkley Avenue and Ownby Drive, orange flamesilluminate the thick smoke that billows through Lettermen Hall.
As students search for the nearest exit they fight through theopaque clowds of smoke, unable to see the person in front of them.Unlike most fires, this one is staged and all of the students willsafely find an exit.
Every year, first-year SMU students attend the Great Escape, anevent that takes place in Lettermen Hall to promote fire safety inthe residence halls.
“[The Great Escape] is a joint effort involving housingand University Park,” said SMU’s Fire SafetyCoordinator Floyd Phelps.
The Great Escape is an event where students are placed in a firesimulation to educate them on fire safety and how to escape if afire were to occur. The building is filled with fake smoke andtheatrical lights act as flames.
“You can’t even see in front of your face,”Phelps said. “It is like a real fire situation.”
This year SMU fire inspectors, along with the University ParkFire Marshall, started a series of changes to the residence hallsand buildings on campus. Over the summer Mary Hay Hall and PeytonHall were “sprinkled.”
They are now equipped with sprinklers that meet the updatedstandards. Boaz and Shuttles Halls will be “sprinkled”by the summer of 2004.
“SMU has an agreement with University Park to have all ofthe buildings on campus sprinkled within 10 years,” said SMUfire inspector James Oravsky. “The residence halls are ourfirst priority.”
There are several buildings on campus with no sprinkler systems,there were no rules when the older buildings were built, Oravskysaid.
Each dorm room is equipped with a basic stand-alone smokedetector with a battery backup, but the smoke detectors in thenewer buildings are tied into the fire alarm system allowing fasterresponse time.
Audio testing has been done in all halls to test the decibellevel of the alarms.
“We put sensors next to the pillows where someone would besleeping to see if you can hear [the alarm],” Oravskysaid.
Students can decide for themselves whether or not the alarms areloud enough when fire drills begin in a couple of weeks.
Fire drills will begin after the Great Escape when students havealready gone through the procedure, Oravsky said.
The Great Escape is scheduled for Sept. 3.
