What They Bought With the Grant:

• Fire Safety Day: Interactive activities for students, faculty, staff and community at ECSU
• Educational Training throughout the year
• Fire Extinguisher Training Pan
• Promotional Fire Safety items
• Fire Safety Education DVD

How the Grant Has Helped:

Colleges throughout the country average 1,800 fires per year; six of these fires will result in student fatalities. In 2006, ECSU was awarded a Fire Prevention and Safety grant to support its goal of zero fire occurrences of fire per year through interactive training. With this funding, the ECSU Environmental Health and Safety Department was able to orchestrate a Fire Safety Day on September 21, 2006 that would get students' attention. The funding also provided for small group safety trainings throughout the school year.

Fire Safety Day: On September 21, 2006 participants took part in hands-on activities including the following:

• Navigation of a smoke filled trailer
• Practice with a real extinguisher on a real fire
• Special exhibits of actual campus fires
• A “Live Dorm Room Burn”
• Talk with local city firefighters

The Burn was the climax of the day's activities. Students witnessed first hand the speed and ferocity of fire; and felt the unbearable heat as the burn blackened and destroyed everything in the room in less than three minutes. “I didn't think it would happen so fast. I'm going back to my room and double check things.” These were some of the comments students made to NBC and FOX news media filming the event.

The unobstructed smoke detector went off in seven seconds while the covered detector, a common occurrence at colleges, activated 40 seconds later. The tapestry on the ceiling caught fire within 90 seconds as the fire doubled in size. The local city fire department put out the fire two minutes and 40 seconds after it had started.

The event took place in collaboration with ECSU faculty, Staff and Students. ECSU Media students and faculty created a DVD of the live burn for use in future fire safety training for incoming students. Art students designed logos and slogans for the promotional items: t-shirts, Frisbees and water bottles. These were given out as incentives to participate in the interactive events.

Evaluation of the results was done with a pre and post-quiz/survey. Prior to the events held on Fire Safety Day, only 34% of those surveyed knew how to use a fire extinguisher. This percentage almost doubled to 71% after the training.

For additional information regarding this event, please contact Eric Germain at (860) 465-5103,
e-mail germaine@easternct.edu.

Community Info:

Willimantic, CN
Windham County
Dorm population: 2500