Photos by TAMMY ISOLA / Scroll

Campus fire code sets precautions for students

Mandy Atwood ATW05001@BYUI.EDU Scroll Staff

Fire safety was not the first thing on students’ minds as they sat down for the inauguration last month. Students on campus shouldn’t worry though because Kyle Williams, the campus fire chief, has things under control.

The fire protection office on campus does quarterly inspections of all the buildings, and the city inspects everything as well.

Williams said that just because this is an LDS school, it doesn’t mean we are exempt from the rules and are therefore safe. We should be obeying the rules more because of who we are and what we stand for.

The Hart Auditorium has the capacity to seat 4,377 people and there are enough exits for everybody to get safely out of the auditorium and enough room for people to get out of the building, Williams said.

“There are a lot of things to consider when talking about the fire code,” Williams said. “People think that it’s only about getting out of the room. But it has to do with the width of the doors, the space outside of the doors, the different places to get out of the building. There is math involved.”

Williams said the campus is safe. Each building, including the Hart Auditorium, is in compliance with the Rexburg city fire code. Most buildings have fire escape plans shown throughout the building.

The ones that don’t are the newly remodeled or recently added buildings like the Thomas E. Ricks and the Gordon B. Hinckley Buildings.

“The signs for the exits around campus are pretty clear,” said Kelly Greenough, a sophomore from Liverpool, England. “I don’t think that there is any building that I don’t know how to get out of. I feel pretty safe.”

“I think that the properties are safe because of the sprinkler systems and alarms that are all over campus,” Williams said. “The students need to be aware of their surroundings, especially in their dorm rooms.”

“On-campus I wouldn’t feel safe because they have never run fire drills,” said Kasey Thomas, a sophomore from Rockland, Idaho. “I think it would be a good idea to start running fire drills.”

Seventy-eight percent of fires at universities happen off-campus, according to www.campusfire.org.

The fire protection office is more concerned with the fires that happen off-campus than those that could potentially happen on campus, because they are more prevalent.

“I am a little unprepared because if there was a major fire there would be no way to warn the other tenants in different apartments,” Thomas said.

“Another thing is that students tend to go out of a building the same way they came in because it’s the most familiar to them, which may not always be the best situation,” Williams said. “Students need to look at their surroundings in case of an emergency.”

“Students need to have a second way out. They need to be aware that there is probably more than one exit to the room,” Williams said. “My personal plan is that I want to sit near the exits.”