Fire Academy Ignites New Training

January 16, 2008

Alicia Duplessis
aduples@tulane.edu

Chants of "pull, aim, squeeze and sweep" — the directions for using a fire extinguisher — blared on the Tulane uptown campus Friday (Jan.11) as Student Affairs' Office of Housing and Residence Life conducted its first Fire Academy.

The new academy, using hands-on activities, replaces the old classroom method of fire safety training for incoming and existing resident advisers.

"Prior to this change, the resident advisers were trained in fire safety using a PowerPoint presentation and sitting through a lecture," says Nicholas Rachowicz, housing and residence life area director. "This is down and dirty, bare-bones training and a crash course in what to do if there is ever an emergency."

Friday's 120 participants spent 25 minutes at each of four training stations situated in and around the residence halls on the uptown campus.

Perhaps the most exciting station the trainees anticipated was a simulated smoky hallway where Louis Mayer of the Tulane Office of Environmental Health and Safety instructed the group on how to evacuate a burning building by staying low and crawling beneath the undulating smoke.

"We shut down all the air conditioners, silenced the smoke detectors and used non-toxic theatrical smoke to substantially decrease visibility," says Mayer. "This is the first training of its kind at the university, and I think it's going to be a hit with the staff."

One by one, the resident advisers dropped to the floor and crawled 30 feet to the exit at the other end of the hall.

"This is much better than sitting in a classroom for eight hours a day," says Justin Grant, a junior and fifth-semester resident adviser. "The smoke-filled hallway was disorienting because you couldn't see, but since it was breathable, it probably wasn't as realistic as a real smoky hallway."

At another station, resident advisers used real extinguishers to douse an imaginary fire.

"There are no campuses in New Orleans that I'm aware of holding a training as involved as this one," says Terry Hardy Sr., a captain in the New Orleans Fire Department. "We are pleased that the university took the initiative in contacting us to be a part of it."

According to Hardy, who led one of Friday's training sessions, there were 3,300 fires on college campuses around the country in the last year resulting in 39 deaths and more than 400 injuries.

Rachowicz plans to expand the training to include more stations in the future. The next training session will be in the fall semester.