September 7, 2007
By Kirk Sibbald
With campus-wide fire drills set to start in the coming days, students, faculty and staff are being asked to take seriously commands handed down from those wearing reflective orange armbands.
In order to make drills, or real emergency situations, run smoothly, the University has about 650 volunteer fire wardens on campus, explained Larry Riopka, the University’s fire and contractor safety manager. These people direct traffic both in and outside of buildings when a fire alarm is sounded, though until this year the wardens had no means of identifying themselves as such.
In order to address this issue, the Department of Health, Safety and Environment explored several options, eventually settling on reflective armbands that allow the masses to identify who has authority in these situation, Riopka said.
“When we do our drills, sometimes there’s a question as to how do we identify those particular people. (The armbands) are an effective and inexpensive way to do that.”
Riopka explained the annual fire drills are held in mid-September, after students arrive on campus, but it’s early enough that exams and other important academic work usually isn’t disrupted. Although alarms will sometimes be set off during regular maintenance work, Riopka said anytime it stays on longer than 10 seconds people should treat the situation as a real emergency.
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