By Nate West
News Editor
The St. Bonaventure Office of Safety and Security conducted a Fire Emergency exercise for the east side of campus on Wednesday.
“A ‘Fire Emergency Exercise’ is limited in scope to the East end of campus. A drill is smaller scale and in cases of fires, usually encompass only one building,” Vito Czyz, director of the Office of Safety and Security, said.
According to Czyz, townhouses 11, 12, 13, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 26 were all involved in the drill.
There are four main objectives of the Fire Emergency exercise, according to Czyz.
“We evaluate student response to the emergency notification (E2 and Pull Station Alarms) including responsiveness, interaction with residence life staff and more,” Czyz said. “Also, we test whether an assembly area is known and used by evacuating personnel, evaluate student and affected personnel accountability methods by staff in the assembly area and evaluate the MERT ability to respond to a burn victim of a cooking accident.”
The department of Education requires drills be run every semester to test the St. Bonaventure Emergency Response plan, according to Czyz. This means students can expect similar drills to happen in the future. The drills may not be exactly the same, he added.
The drill went as planned, Czyz said. There were only a few minor issues during the exercise.
“There were a few valuable learning points, which we are still in the process of sorting through,” he said. “However, there were two issues that were discovered during the exercise including an apartment in which a smoke detector was intentionally covered to prevent fire or smoke detection. In addition, some occupants attempted to re-enter several apartments during the evacuation. Both of these will be reinforced in future drills and exercises. Overall, the exercise was successful and occupants exited in a timely manner. In order for accountability to be performed, it was necessary to gather residents in the San Damiano room which serves as the Temporary Shelter Area for the Townhouse and Gardens residents. Residence Life staff addressed accountability of residents.”
