Safety ignites with fire suppression equipment
Utah State University’s Fire Marshal’s Office has obtained new state-of-the-art training equipment to elevate fire safety and equip the campus community with essential knowledge on fire suppression.
The fire marshal’s office is a branch of USU public safety. While they do not fight fires, they help prevent fires on campus by eliminating their causes. According to the university’s website, some of the key responsibilities of this office include providing fire prevention and fire extinguishing training, testing fire detection systems and alarms monthly and conducting annual fire safety inspections for all buildings.
USU’s Deputy Fire Marshal Lauren Schreck discussed the frequency of campus fires.
“I wouldn’t say we have a definitive number or frequency. The times that we see a true fire with flame or spark are pretty minimal. We see a lot in housing, where we’re getting a lot of fire alarms, especially towards the beginning of semesters, a lot of kids, maybe burning food. Haven’t really cooked on their own yet, they’re learning, and so we see a lot more instances of smoke than we do actual flame,” Schreck said.
Assistant Fire Marshal Brandon Stirland told The Statesman that student housing residents have been removing smoke detectors in their rooms, which can be dangerous for themselves and others.
“We do see it at times, I wouldn’t say all the time, but there are times where students will remove smoke detectors, especially from inside their rooms, whether they be vaping or doing something they shouldn’t be doing. We know about those because that sends an alarm anytime a smoke detector is removed from the ceiling,” Stirland said.
The alarm doesn’t alert the whole building, but it sends a notice to the public safety office so they instantly know when it’s been done.
“We come check the fire alarm panel and it tells us the room, the device address of where that specific smoke detector is located, and then we know,” Stirland said.
There are about 4,500 fire extinguishers across campus. However, this large number is rendered useless if students and staff don’t know how to use them. To keep people informed, the USU Fire Marshal’s Office offers free training on how to use extinguishers.
“It gives people a better understanding of how to use it so that they’re not scared when they have to use it,” Stirland said. “When you see fire, what do you do? Automatically your brain goes numb, for me anyway. So this really helps getting people familiar with how to use one.”
Originally, training was done with real fire extinguishers. The two new training extinguishers contain water.
“LION is a manufacturer of firefighting equipment. They manufacture turnouts, firefighter gear. Logan City actually has one of these, and that’s where we looked at theirs,” Stirland said. “We needed to do something different because we were doing a lot of training on campus with different colleges and different people. We were always checking the wind to make sure, you know, where to place our burn pan. The burn pan that we had actually had sawdust, and we would use fuel like gasoline to light the fire, and then we would have fire extinguishers that we would use that had the powder in them. The cost of just the powder alone in our extinguishers is about six dollars a pound.”
The extinguisher included with the Lion Fire Extinguisher Trainer is cleaner and more cost-effective without the dry chemicals commonly found in real ones. The burn pan that makes the fire can be turned on and off with a remote control which adds a layer of safety.
“We have lots of different types of fire extinguishers. We have some specialty ones for kitchen areas and different things around campus. The way you use an extinguisher is the same across the board. So if you know how to use one extinguisher, you know how to use them all,” Schreck said.