Any student who’s lived on campus for a semester has experienced a fire drill in the residence halls.  It is all too common to be awoken from your slumber and dragged out of your bed by the screeching sirens.  

According to the OUPD Chief of Police Mark Gordon, these fire drills are mandated by the state and are only required in the residence halls.  

“The likelihood of having a fire in a residence hall is much more likely [than anywhere else on campus],” Gordon said.  “You have the ability to take into a residence hall combustible things. Statistically, having a fire in a residence hall is higher than in a academic [building].”  

The University does their part to ensure fire safety, not just with the state mandated fire drills.  There are smoke detectors in every single room and fire extinguishers provided on each floor of the residence halls and apartment buildings.  These fire extinguishers are checked by the fire inspector every single month.  

Every occupied building at Oakland is also equipped with a sprinkler system.  These sprinkler systems can be activated by temperature.  They are also equipped with flow alarms.

“If a sprinkler head is activated anywhere and the water begins to flow, that will set off the entire system,” Gordon explained.  “There’s sensors inside of the pipes, so when water begins to move, the computer begins to think there must be a fire somewhere, so it sets off the sprinkler system.”

Gordon stated that just about every fire emergency that happens on campus is due to residents.  There are a variety of precautions in place to limit fire hazards, such as the restrictions of candles and toasters in the dorms. However, many risk factors still remain.  

A lot of the efforts towards fire safety don’t lie in the hands of OUPD or the fire station.  They lie in the hands of the residents.  

The month of May is Building safety month, and Rochester Hills is putting on a variety of events to educate residents on how to make their living quarters safer.  There are many tidbits of information available that Oakland University residents can use when living in the dorms or apartment buildings.

For example, students are warned about unattended cooking — the number one cause of cooking fires.  It is vitally important to stay in the kitchen.  

Additionally, it is important to make sure you’re cleaning cooking surfaces regularly to prevent food and grease build-up.  In the dorm building, stoves and ovens are public, and available to all residents.  It is not just polite to clean up after yourself, if is essential to fire safety.

Furthermore, many food fires can be extinguished with baking soda.  You are never to use water or flour on cooking fires.   Water repels grease and can spread the fire by splattering grease.  Flour can cause explosions or make the fire much worse.

We’ve been taught fire safety since preschool, but as we get older we develop bad habits.  Building safety month reminds us to be mindful of those habits and make efforts to change them.  Fire safety is in our own hands.