Fire Safety

When you visit the UK it becomes apparent almost immediately that there is great concern about fire safety.  Its not that surprising considering the age of the majority of buildings and the large fires that have hit their cities in the past.  Electrical maintenance vans are a common site -- maybe the different electricity here is part of the problem.  School fire alarms are tested often, even weekly at one of my university buildings.  To me, this is a bit much.

Derek and I live in student accommodation, and so of course the university's safety concerns are filtered through accommodation services to us.  Our building isn't "purpose-built" for accommodation -- it's an old (likely 19th century) tenement building with private businesses on the ground floor and university owned flats on the first, second and third.  We're close to campus, but not on it, and so while we must call university security if there's ever a problem, there isn't anyone on site to help.

Fire safety stickers, signs and posters are all over businesses, school building and our place. We have a fire blanket in the kitchen and an extinguisher in the closet.  Our kitchen door and living room door are fire doors that we are required to keep closed at all times.  It is so annoying when I want to have a conversation with the cook (ie Derek) or shout something from the bedroom to the living room.  Plus they slam shut, annoying the neighbours below.  But we've been sent pointed emails warning us about facing possible charges if we prop them open at any time, and we can't risk jeopardizing our visas!

The good thing is that we all pay close attention to this issue and feel quite safe.  But I think the university might want to pay attention to our deadly stairwell if they are truly concerned about fire safety.  

The steep, uneven steps of our narrow spiral staircase (which had inadequate lighting until I complained twice to accommodation services) would not provide a safe exit in smokey conditions in my opinion.  

Anyway, the inspiration for this post was the latest email telling me about the quarterly fire alarm testing that'll be happening on Wednesday.  You might think this is nothing particularly interesting, but what's notable is that they just did a round of testing last Wednesday, going into several flats and setting off the alarms throughout the building (quite annoying since I was marking essays at the time).  I've been sent a schedule from the university justifying these intrusions by reminding us that these tests must be done four times a year, but they're actually going to be done weekly until the end of January.  With only 6 flats to test and several being entered per week, I don't know what to think.