Campus Stock | Photo by Bethany Althauser | The Wright State Guardian
Millett Hall experienced a problem with the fire alarms that resulted in them going off during the day repetitively, causing frustrations and questions on the part of students and staff.
Experiences
Emma Bemis, a sophomore Social Science Education major, was in her Russian culture class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and it often went off around 12:30 p.m. every time.
Bemis explained that the first time it went off, the class was tasting various Russian foods that the professor had brought in for them.
“We thought someone was pulling it just to get out of class. The second time, we missed a decent chunk of lecture because of it,” Bemis said. “There is so much to cover in Russian history, so even losing that small amount of time took away from more things we could’ve learned. That class has been my favorite class all semester, so I was kind of bummed every time it went off.”
Kylie Robinson, a sophomore Elementary Education major, was impacted by the fire alarms during her American Sign Language class.
“The first time it went off, our professor ended class early because he didn’t know if it was real or not. We had another hour left. The second and third times, we waited for it to end, and that wasted like 30 minutes of learning vocab in each class. It was definitely annoying,” Robinson said.
Despite now knowing that the issue has been solved, Robinson still has concerns.
“I’m glad it’s fixed, but it just feels like one more thing that’s messed up about campus. Like one of many issues, you know?” Robinson said.
Solution
Javan Conley, associate vice president of Facility Operations, explained what was wrong with the fire alarm system as well as how they fixed it.
“The fire alarm system over in the Millett, and it’s the same in every building, has flow alarms within the pipe system, so whenever that water’s moving, it will set the building into alarm, because that typically means that there’s water being discharged somewhere, which is not a good thing,” Conley said. “In Millett, what we had was just [several] flow monitor switches that failed. They will replace the system as an alarm since all those sensors are replaced.”
He then explained that it was simply a result of the system getting older and a typical mechanical failure that is at risk of happening in any building, especially an older one.
“In that particular case, you know, fire alarms are top priority, they’re life safety systems, they can’t be faulty, they can’t be left unattended,” Conley explained. “Fire alarms are one of those things that even if it’s accidental, we take every single instance that happens and we review it.”
In this case, the cause of the faulty alarms was simply an outdated flow alarm system, which Facility Operations replaced around two weeks ago, according to Conley. Since then, the fire alarms have not gone off.
Online work orders available
Conley wants students to know that they can fill out an online work order if they see anything wrong on campus or anything that needs to be fixed.
