RE: Building Evacuation Policies & Fines?

["Judson M. Freed" <freed004@maroon.tc.umn.edu>]

>At our College in Winnipeg, the past President demanded that college staff
>members take lead roles in building evacuation,(disciplinary action was
>threatened).

Unfortunately, in Minnesota and every where else in the US of which I am
aware, this is illegal.
>
>1. We increased the number of scheduled evacuation exercises to one
>building every 2 weeks. This works out to 2 exercises per academic year.

Excellent idea. Our problem at Minnesota is that we have 200+ buildings
occupied by 750 departments. We work with the tennents to put drills
together, but excepting high rise structures where drills are legally
required, we have limited success.

>2. We have identified fire marshals who are assigned specific areas to
>ensure evacuation and are issued hats to identify their authority.

Inthe US this is illegal unless (1) the requirement is in the employees job
description and (2) the employee receives OSHA approved training. Then of
course, there is the concept of requiring employees to stay in a burning
building to assist in evacuation. Our risk management people would not
think of allowing this.

I think that in the US we have different (and anoying) legal requirements
than you have up north. Also, the size of the University makes any single
method difficult to adopt. So, here is what we do at the University of
Minnesota:

First, we work with departments to try to set up voluntary safety groups
within the building. For instance, our building - which is the main admin
building  - has neither alarms nor sprinklers, so we have set up a phone
tree to notify people of building wide emergencies, and an e-mail list
serve for routine safety announcements. We have established similar
committees in other buildings.

Second, only police officers have the authority to remove people against
their will, our campus Police (licensed officers) respond to all fire
alarms.

Third, our department, along with our Department of Environmental Health
and Safety and our own Fire Inspector work with the facilities required by
statute to conduct drills, and we all respond to all fires. Critiques and
reports are issued.

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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Judson M. Freed BA, EMT-P
Deputy Director
University of Minnesota
Department of Emergency Management
B-1 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
Minneapolis, MN  55455

(o)    (612)625-2802
(fax)(612) 627-4770

freed004@tc.umn.edu
http://www.umn.edu/nlhome/m435/freed004/.html


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