Campus Fire Safety Month

Free Resources Available from Campus Firewatch

BELCHERTOWN, Mass., August 9, 2012 – As September, which is designated as National Campus Fire Safety Month, approaches, schools across the nation are preparing for new and returning students. This is an excellent opportunity to educate these students about their role in campus fire safety and making sure that the 2012-2013 academic year is a safe one. As the United States Fire Administration says, “Fire is Everyone’s Fight” and that everyone has a role in making a fire-safe society!

Last academic year, 9 students were killed in campus-related fires, which reversed the downward trend that had been occurring since 2007-2008 when 18 people were killed. Since Campus Firewatch started tracking campus-related fires in 2000, 155 people have died in campus-related fires across the nation with 86% of them occurring in off-campus housing.

To help schools in doing outreach during September, Campus Firewatch has compiled free resources on its web page. These resources include not only information, but tools that the schools can integrate into their web sites as well, such as a map of campus-related fire fatalities, videos that can be embedded and its Twitter “Tip-a-Day” program.

These include:

9 Fires This is a video documentary that will be available in September that chronicles the impact that 9 campus-related fires had on the families, the victims and the communities.
Tip-a-day Campus Firewatch will once again be doing its Tip-a-Day campaign on Twitter @campusfirewatch with tips that schools can send out to their students.
Current Information Sheet This is an “at a glance” compilation of the 155 campus-related fire deaths since 200.
Campus-Related Fire Deaths (spreadsheet format) This is a spreadsheet-formatted listing of the incidents that includes dates, locations, names and other information regarding the fatal fires.
Map of Campus-Related Fatal Fires A graphic representation of all of the fatal fires identified by Campus Firewatch. More information on each incident can be found by positioning the cursor over the incident. For schools or communities that are interested in embedding this map on their web site, the embed code is provided on the web page.
Campus Fatal Firelog This is a continually-updated summary of all fatal campus-related fires identified by Campus Firewatch since 2000.
Campus Firelog This document contains a compilation of all campus-related incidents (fatal and non-fatal) since 2000 with over 1,300 incidents listed.
RA Fire Safety Guide, Videos and Posters Campus Firewatch worked with the Minger Foundation on developing resources for Resident Assistants to use in teaching fire safety to students on their floors. This includes a guide and posters with QR codes that, when scanned, take the student to short video clips with more information.
Questions to Ask These are a series of questions that students and parents can ask when looking at student housing.
Videos of student room mockup burns More schools are conducting mockup burns of student rooms to demonstrate the speed with which fire can spread and the effectiveness of sprinklers in controlling these fires. These are a series of videos compiled by Campus Firewatch of burns that have been done across the country.
Mockup burn plans To help schools and communities in doing these burns, the Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition has developed a series of plans on how to build mockups.
Peter’s Story Peter Talen, a student from the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, was killed in an off-campus fire at Madison while visiting his brother. This video tells of the life of Peter and the impact that this fire had on those around him.
Fire Safety for Students with Disabilities Campus Firewatch and the Minger Foundation developed a guide and a series of videos to help in teaching fire safety to students with disabilities.

All of these resources are available, free of charge, from the Campus Firewatch web site at http://www.campus-firewatch.com/resources/ncfsmresources/

Campus Firewatch is a social enterprise focusing on campus fire safety that was started in 2000. For more information, visit our website at www.campus-firewatch.com.

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