At Colgate University, we inform the Residential Life office about the date
and approx. time (7:30 - 11:00pm)
With the email system the Residential Life office can spread the word
quickly to their staff.  We have found that cooperation with the Residential
Life Department is important, when we work with them, they work with us if
we start to get a pattern of false alarms, they are an extra set of eyes and
ears for us.  We do not over do the fire drills, the students get the idea
that it might be fun later in the night when we have pushed the drills.
When we do the drills we have extra Campus Safety officers blocking off the
main routes of exit, then the students have to exit via a route they don't
even know, about or don't use regularly.  We push the idea of knowing all
the routes of exit from the dorms.
Our officers conduct a room by room check for complete evacuation.
John Basher
Assistant Director of Fire Safety
Colgate University
13 Oak Drive
Hamilton, NY 13346
[log in to unmask]
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Fox [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Tuesday, May 02, 2000 4:13 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Fire Drills


First off, I would like to thanks all of you for your responses, This was a
hypothetical question that I threw out to get some feel for because certain
local people have asked the question to me. I told them I would get some
data
from other schools as to how they felt about it to back up my response to
them.
I fully agree with you and would like to report that the general consensus
(100% so far) is that a false alarm cannot be considered a fire drill no
matter
how it is conducted.

Secondly, I would also like to throw this out at the list: Which do you
preffer, surprize fire drills or announced fire drills, and why?
I feel that there should be a set schedule of fire drills, but that there
should also be a few unannounced drills so that students do not get
complacent.
Thoughts?


Michael Fox
Dep. Fire Inspector
Yale University
Office of the Fire Marshal
314 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06515
voice: 203-432-9924
fax: 203-432-8937
email: [log in to unmask]