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Are our dorms properly protected against fire?
Laura Mitran
Ask a student about quality of life in the university dorms, he is sure to complain a lot about hygiene, comfort, utilities, space, noise and so on. But when it comes to fire safety, students don’t have much to say.
Living in the dorms, they don’t seem to notice the lack of evacuation plans, fire extinguishers or alarms. “What is there to burn in the dorms?” asked Costin Mihaescu, a third-year student in the Polytehnica University.
How about paper, garbage, blankets, cloths and carpets? Most students do not recall any fire incidents in the dorms and some of them have been living there for three years or more.
However, as third-year electronics student Elena Ovreiu recalled, there was a fire in the Leu complex two years ago, caused by an unsafe wire. Fortunately, the fire stayed in the wall, causing smoke and giving students and personnel a scare. The firemen put it out and the administration did some work on the electrical installations.
“If there were a fire in my room, I would call the firemen and run to the neighbors for help, who else is there?” Ovreiu said. In fact, the doorman of every student residence is responsible for storing the extinguishers, using them in case of a fire and calling the Fire Brigade if needed. The doorman is on the ground floor. If a fire broke out on the fourth floor, how quickly would he be there?
Some campuses, like Grozavesti or Regie, have their own teams of volunteer fire fighters who are responsible for putting out a blaze. There are four firemen employed in Regie and six in Grozavesti and they work shifts to cover all 24 hours. That means that often, and especially during the night, there is only one person on duty. That’s worrying since in Regie alone there are more than 20 dorms.
Extinguishers or hoses have been taken out of the reach of students because they “play with them,” said Tudor Cristina, administrator of the Kogalniceanu residence. Or they may “steal them”, according to Viorica Anghelescu, chief administrator of Grozavesti complex. So one can wander up and down the corridors without seeing a single extinguisher. Imagine a real emergency – by the time, the doorman has been alerted and arrived with an extinguisher, a small fire might have turned into a large one.
One can see no evacuation plans on the hallways and there are also no fire alarms. Surely, this is not right. Anghelescu said she could not remember any other fire incident apart from one 20 years ago. “Someone put a fridge in the garbage disposal room, and someone else, God knows why, set it on fire. All the students rushed instantly with basins with water and it was out,” she said.
The electrical installations seems a very likely cause for a fire in the dorms. The wiring is old, the wires are not properly insulated and there are rooms where the sockets are not well fixed in the walls. Students run wires from room to room. It’s unsafe and illegal but nobody stops them.
“I think the possibility of a fire exists, as sockets are often falling off the walls,” said Irina, who is living in the A unit of Grozavesti. That will change soon, according to the chief administrator of Grozavesti complex. Units C and D have already been completely renovated and rewired. Work will begin on upgrading units A and B on June 30, after the end of the semester.
Another risk would be the use of heaters in rooms, as there is no kitchen for students to prepare meals in the dorms. There were some discussions about banning the heaters, but nothing happened. “It’s only natural to have a heater in your room if there’s no kitchen,” said Oana, a postgraduate student in administration, adding that it’s her fifth year in Grozavesti and she has never heard of any fire.
Just because it never happened in the past doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen in the future. “Sometimes students put something to heat on the heater and leave the room forgetting about it. There have been small accidents,” said Sandu Florea, a fire fighter in Regie. Let’s hope there won’t be a big one.
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