Fire sprinklers coming to residence halls

by Joe King

Lincoln Hall might soon become the first NIU residence hall to be equipped with automatic fire sprinklers.

The Finance, Facilities and Operations Committee recommended at its Sept. 7 meeting that the full NIU Board of Trustees approve spending $1.6 million for installation of the sprinklers. This will be the first of many such projects as, under a bill signed into law in 2004, all college and university residence halls in the state must be equipped with automatic fire sprinklers by 2013.

“When installed, the sprinklers will add another level of fire safety to our residence halls, which we believe are already well protected,” said Kelly Wesener, executive director of NIU Housing and Dining.

Among the fire safety features already built into NIU residence halls are:

• All halls have smoke detectors in every room, and heat sensors in hallways. Individual student room smoke detectors are hard-wired into the electrical system, not battery-powered.
• All halls are constructed of concrete and cinderblock, materials which are highly effective at halting the spread of flames and containing fires to small areas.
• All halls are equipped with mattresses that have an extremely long smolder time, meaning they should trigger smoke alarms long before a mattress is in flames. Some halls have doors that close automatically in the event of a fire to contain the blaze.

The recommendation to fund the sprinkler project was timely as it coincides with a proclamation by Gov. Rod Blagojevich that makes September “Campus Fire Safety Month.”

Nationwide, nearly 90 people have died as a result of on- and off-campus fires and hundreds more have been injured, according to the Center for Campus Fire Safety, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing campus-related fires.

Eighty percent of those deaths occurred in off-campus apartments and homes, which are often not built to the same stringent safety standards applied to university-owned housing.

9-18-06