University Daily Kansan / Wednesday. April 27, 1988
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False fire alarms occur often Students are becoming annoyed and indifferent, officials say
Students are becoming annoyed and indifferent, officials say
By Ric Brack and Kim Lightle Kansan staff writers
Even though 27 percent of all campus fire alarms that Lawrence firefighters have responded to in 1988 have been false alarms, campus and fire department officials don't think the false alarms are a problem.
Lawrence fire marshal Rich Barr said that some campus buildings, such as Bailey Hall, and some residence halls had earned a reputation for having frequent false alarms, but they responded to as if they were actual fires.
Ken Stoner, director of student housing, said he feared that too many false alarms would result in student complacency, and that they would not evacuate the building as quickly as they would in case of a real fire.
This year, many of the false alarms have been attributed to new alarm systems installed in Gertrude Hill. The system is being halled. Stoneer said. The new system is
He said all halls would have the new alarm systems by 1990.
The new alarms are troublesome because they are automatic and are very sensitive, Stoner said.
Pulling a false fire alarm is a class a misdeemeanor punishable by up to one year in the county jail and up to five years in the state jail, aaker of the KU police department.
Longaker said she thought most false alarms came from the residence halls, but she did not have statistics.
being installed in tower A of Jayhawker Towers.
"It's not that the system is malfunctioning," he said. "It's that it is working too well."
cases that were investigated, but that many hours of police time were used to interview witnesses and to follow up leads to catch the culprit.
Stoner said the alarms were set off by people who were smoking cigarettes too near the alarms. He said that the systems were being adjusted so they wouldn't continue to signal false alarms.
"It's not that hard getting information out of students because the students themselves have gotten tired of being made to evacuate. They don't find it funny anymore," Longaker said.
She said that KU police solved only about 25 percent of the false alarm
Lisa Rose, Buffalo Grove, Ill., freshman, said that one recent alarm forced her to stand in the rain for an hour while Oliver Hall staff conducted a room-to-room safety check.
Such safety checks are mandatory whenever there is an alarm, Stoner said. The safety checks can take up to an hour to complete.
Barr said that it was hard to calculate how much each false alarm cost the fire department because controllers were always on call anyway.
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