Cooking mistakes, malfunctions causes for setting off fire alarms

Forgetting to put water in Easy Mac isn’t usually an attempt to inconvenience local firefighters.

However, IU Police Department Chief  Keith Cash said since Aug. 1 burnt food and false alarms have led to more than 50 residence halls evacuations.

Bob Weith, director of Residential Operations Administration, said three typical causes for fire alarms are malfunctions in alarm systems, cooking accidents and, rarely, pranks. Weith said the Union Street Apartments, which is on a new electronic system, have set off almost one-third of the alarms.

“The newest (system) is having the most trouble,” Weith said.

Weith said cooking accidents are the most common reason fire alarms are set off in on-campus housing, a trend that Union Street Residence Manager John Rivera has noticed in the apartments.

“Every alarm has been due to cooking accidents and burning food. There has been no false alarms or pulls,” he said. “There have been only three which evacuated the whole
building, though.”

Rivera said he didn’t expect this to be a problem, but he is now trying to educate residents about how to prevent the smoke detectors from going off.

“We’ve sent e-mails offering pointers,” Rivera said. “A few different apartments are having reoccurring problems, so we will take a more aggressive approach if it continues.”

For all fire alarms in the Union Street Apartments, Rivera requires staff to check and silence each smoke detector.

“I think it’s people being stupid,” said freshman Derek Price, a resident of Ashton Residence Center. “The stoves in our buildings are messed up. If you cook something, you will get a lot of smoke and that will set them off.”

While pranks haven’t been a problem this year, Weith said they had seen incidents in the past where students pulled fire alarms.
“
If we see a case of someone pulling the alarms, it usually happens multiple times,” Weith said.

To discourage residents from pulling fire alarms, RPS has encased the hallway alarms with a plastic cover that sounds a pre-alarm. This alarm does not alert the police department; it only sounds a loud alarm on the floor.

The device allows residents to see who pulled the alarm when they hear the pre-alarm sound.

“The more non-real fire alarms, folks are conditioned not to be attentive and evacuate,” Weith said.