Hear Harlaxton Head Gardner Andrew Potter tell of how he spotted the Stoke Rochford fire when he was a gardner there.
|
By Sharon S. Kessler
Harlaxton College Web Design Student
Friday, February 1, 2008
Dusti Evans had just put shampoo in her hair when she heard the shrill
alarm.
“Is this a joke?” she recalled thinking. “Who would put a fire drill at this
time?”
It was 7 on a Wednesday morning, Jan. 16, and it wasn’t a joke.
Evans, 20, a sophomore from Green Bay, Wis., poked her head out the shower
room door and saw people running down the hall of Harlaxton Manor’s top
floor – the 500 corridor.
“People are seriously running,” she said to herself. And, without taking
time to go back to her room and grab some clothes, she wrapped one towel
around her head, another around her torso and headed for the exit.
That’s how Evans came to be standing in the Harlaxton Manor courtyard,
shivering in her towel and shower shoes in the predawn gloom as college
administrators took a head count.
Embarrassing? Yes. But, very, very smart, Dean of Students Matthew
Andrzejewski said.
“We always have one or two in the shower or without shoes,” Andrzejewski
said of the fire drills, “but it’s better to get out without shoes than not
to get out at all.”
The fire at Stoke Rochford Hall in January 2005 started in an electrical circuit on on the building's upper floors. Stoke Rochford was designed by the same architect
who finished Harlaxton Manor and built about the same time. (Photo by Toby Roberts, Johnston Press plc) |
It’s not only that Stoke Rochford was designed by the same architect who finished Harlaxton Manor and was constructed in the 1840s of similar materials that worries Andrzejewski. What he finds most alarming was the swiftness of the fire’s destructive fury.
“It’s rather unnerving,” said Andrzejewski, who keeps a laminated copy of
the Grantham Journal story about the fire in his office. The newspaper
reported that by the time the firefighters arrived the house was almost
fully engulfed.
“We have to make sure students are safe, make sure they know how to get out
without us holding their hands,” he said. “There are staircases everywhere,
and if you add smoke into it, it’s so much harder.”
Grantham’s fire station manager couldn’t agree more. “On first hearing an
alarm, make your way out as quickly as possible is the best advice I can
give,” Andy Ford said. “That’s in everyone’s best interest.”
Ford said Grantham firefighters would arrive in “10 minutes max” once the
alarm sounds. But 10 minutes is a long time for a fire to spread, so
“everyone needs to be aware of the danger,” he said.
Ford noted that the Stoke Rochford fire differed from a potential fire at
Harlaxton Manor in two ways: That manor is farther from the fire station,
and there was no water source next to the manor. Nonetheless, fire safety at
Harlaxton Manor is a concern. Ford said the Fire Station conducts regular
fire safety assessments of the manor and works with the college on a
strategy, which includes fire drills, training resident assistants and
improving equipment.
A fire assessment is scheduled for Feb. 8, in which fire officials will tour
the manor to look at the upgrades and to make further suggestions for
improvements. “We always take their advice,” said Ian Welsh, the college’s
business manager.
Most recently, the college spent £7,500 to upgrade the fire-alarm
control panel and install “sounders” (alarms) in every room on the 200 and
500 corridors, Welsh said. In April, sounders will be added to every room on
the 300 corridor as well. Those improvements and the fire drills are to
ensure that people in all areas of the house can hear the alarm in their
bedrooms, classrooms, common areas … and, of course, the showers, he said.
In addition, Grantham firefighters regularly train at Harlaxton Manor. A
recent exercise involved five pumper trucks and firefighters simulating a
fire on the upper floors, said Ford, the Fire Station manager. It’s all part
of a coordinated effort to do what needs to be done if the worst happens.
But the goal is to keep the worst from happening.
“An electrical fault which occurred on one of the upper floors,” is how Ford
describes the flashpoint for the Stoke Rochford fire. That’s a concern at
Harlaxton Manor as well.
Andrzejewski said the college had a close call last summer, when a
conference-goer used an immersion heater to make some tea in her room and
set the device on a towel, which subsequently burst into flames.
“It could have been bad,” he said, noting that the person described the
flames as 1-foot tall before she was able to put it out. “We’re glad it
didn’t catch and go.”
On the up side, he said it served as a warning for the college to be more
vigilant about immersion heaters and other such devices. The immersion
heaters are now banned from the premises. But what of the hairdryers,
curling irons, desk lamps and other appliances?
Andrzejewski says a little common sense is required.
“Don’t plug 30 things into the same circuit,” he said.
“It would break my heart to stand out there (in the courtyard) and watch
this burn and then find out it was an overloaded circuit,” he said. “We need
to be very smart about using electricity.”
The proper way to use the switched circuits is to turn them off whenever
they are not in use, he said. Even if, for instance, you have turned your
hairdryer off, it is best to switch off the electrical circuit, too, and
unplug the appliance.
“Don’t pull the plug out without switching off the circuit,” Andrzejewski
said. “You don’t want to create a spark.”
Ford says closing doors behind you is also part of the fire safety plan.
Closed doors could help contain a fire to a single room or hallway.
Adrzejewski wasn’t pleased with the results of the fire drill on Jan. 16.
“We have to do better,” he said. “We don’t want to scare people. We want to
give them all the information we have. Don’t dilly-dally … you need to get
out.”
So, at 7 a.m. this Wednesday, the sounders blared again, forcing the
residents of Harlaxton Manor to trundle outside again into the predawn
chill.
This time the manor residents impressed Andrzejewski. Instead of the eight minutes with a few people missing as during the Jan. 16 drill, everyone was out and accounted for in four minutes Wednesday, he said with a smile.
And where was Evans when the alarm rang on Wednesday?
In a T-shirt and flip-flops, but at least not in the middle of a shower, she
said. “I was brushing my teeth.”
A sign in Harlaxton Manor's Pegasus Courtyard warns against matches and lighters.