Although what I report below will not be news to those who live in the Brevard residence hall, it is important that the entire campus be made aware of the danger that falsely pulling fire alarms pose to the entire community. While late night/early morning fire alarms are not that unknown to most who reside on campus, Brevard Hall has experienced numerous fire alarms in the last month. The actions of whoever is doing this have gotten to be ridiculous and have begun to endanger the community that almost 500 students are a part of. The most blatant disregard for others was when somebody attempted to unscrew a pipe for the fire suppression system (read: flood the building). This sort of behavior is not a funny prank and really reflects badly on the maturity of University of Tampa students or those we allow into our buildings.
The repeated pulling of these alarms endangers students, as many logically conclude after a half-dozen or so false alarms that whenever they hear one, which lately has been almost consistently between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. Saturday morning, that it is a false alarm. However, these systems are meant to alert those in the building of the danger being posed. When one decides to turn over and hug the pillow around his or her ears, he or she could be in serious danger. While these students are rested snuggly in their bed, however, those who do follow directive are forced to wait outside while the search is carried on. I cannot blame these students for staying in their bed because I have often had to force myself to re-clothe and descend from the ninth floor via the staircase.
UT policy states that those who fail to evacuate during an emergency evacuation face a fine and termination of their housing contract. Because so many students have been failing to evacuate during these alarms, UT Security has, on several occasions, gone room to room to ensure that the building was evacuated.
UT students should be warned that students still die in fires ‘- often because they fail to evacuate after repeated false alarms. Worldwide, students continue to be seriously injured and killed in dorm fires. Since 2000, there have been at least six fatal fires. In my time here at UT, I have seen my room flooded because a student (presumably) decided at 3:30 a.m. that it would be a good idea to hang off of the illuminated ‘EXIT’ sign at the end of the hallway, which happened to be connected to a pipe for the fire suppression system, and ultimately rip it down (while I do blame the student, I place an incredibly small portion of this blame on the engineer who connected these two components of safety equipment). Additionally, the roof of the Vaughn Center’s second floor once caught fire because a discarded cigarette landed on some trash that had been thrown from open windows. Although nobody was hurt in either situation, the need to evacuate was still very important.
In addition to disrupting the sleep schedules of students who have jobs, class, tests or flights to catch the next day, these false alarms also disrupt the life of professional staff members of UT and the wallets of those who live in the building, as each alarm costs UT around $1000 when no real emergency is found. Last Thursday morning I saw another group of individuals that these alarms disrupt ‘- the Tampa firefighters. At these early hours, many firefighters are sleeping between calls as they often have long shifts that they have to work. As the firetruck approached, I could see many of these brave men rubbing their eyes and yawning as they strained to be awake in case there was, in fact, a real threat to us. They knew there probably was no danger, but as I mentioned before, numerous false alarms can also lead to the assumption that a real danger is a false one. Not only are those responsible for these alarms endangering student’-residents, they are endangering the rest of the community in the event another fire was occurring elsewhere or that an actual emergency was being reported on campus.
There are several things that students can do, not just in Brevard Hall, to prevent these alarms from continually going off. First and foremost, report any information to your RA, Area Coordinator or commondamage@ut.edu. Second, be responsible for guests you allow in the building, even if they are UT students. Third, do not let anybody who looks suspicious into your residence hall ‘- ever. Some students have even taken proactive steps like creating the Facebook group ‘Petition for Camera Surveillance of all Fire Alarms at Tampa U.’ Groups like ‘Let’s KILL people who pull fire alarms!!!!’ may take it a little too far, but serious punishment and dismissal from UT (if UT students are responsible) would be adequate for what member Andrew Learned calls ‘vigilante justice.’