warm memories

"Well, there's a first. it's ten years since I joined Hatfield College and its SCR. I long ago graduated into the old guard, and am certainly one of the longest serving tutors now. Being vice-president of the senior common room isn't a role which requires much effort generally, as the president is almost ever-present. Though not tonight. Tonight I was in the hot seat and we had the MCR president and a couple of MCR tutors with guests with us on high table, with the vast majority of students in to formal being sportsmen and women. It was a loud night. Just as we had finished dessert, and the shushing began (unusual, normally they fall silent exceptionally quickly) so that the senior man could bow out to high table, it became apparent (and, interestingly, mainly only audible because they shushed, even as the doors to the kitchen servery slammed shut) that there was another tone in the air, the fire alarm. I have never heard the fire alarm go off in college, I realised. It's a damn sight louder at work, I can tell you. So after some confusion, the students stood up, unsure why the senior man wasn't bowing out and whether they could go or what was happening. We stood and gestured for the exec to get them out, and eventually it seemed to filter through that the fire alarm was going off and the senior common room members were encouraging them to leave for a reason, not because we'd just ditched all usual habits. We remained, while they began for the exits. I spotted at least one girl collecting up half empty bottles on her way... Out! Go. The senior man came back. There isn't anywhere for them to go. We had to move to make them move on through the porch to the tennis court, the assembly point, rather than the quad. Some were ushered the other directions out of the 'fire exit' door of the main hall annexe. Many loitered just outside the door, lighting cigs and making phone calls. Please, I said, look like you're trying to be on the tennis courts, then the sooner we can dismiss you. There seems to be a faulty alarm in C22, it's already gone off once this term, seemingly. This time the porters managed to discourage the fire service from arriving, which is notable because as I recall when I worked in the building next to the Chemistry dept, the Fire Service has to turn out, whether you know for sure it's not actually a fire. Anyway, this year's senior man is a very sensible chap, so when he dismissed them he pointed out -as requested- in no uncertain terms that clearing the main college building in 5 mins was applaudable, but they are supposed to congregate on the tennis court, and to please respect the procedures even if they don't think there's a fire.

All of which reminded me of my second year at Nicholson . As senior residents, one of us per staircase was back prior to the rest of the students at the start of each term. I had the central room on the top floor of D block, facing out of the back, though not directly overlooking the Quad. That Saturday at the beginning of January, I was back, snuggled up in my room watching Moon & Son in that first series that was better than all subsequent ones. So it was about 8.40pm when the fire alarm went off. With only half a dozen of us resident until the morrow, I suspected foul play from ejits from Ferens, and remained to watch the last few minutes. No let up in the alarm. Dammit. Ok, coat on, better go see what's going on. I knew there was only me, so I had no rooms to clear. Got down to the ground floor, opened the door out on to the stairs to the quad, looked left, watched the windows blow out of the third room in on C Block's ground floor. Luckily the design was a diamond, so although you could almost reach the stairs from the nearest balcony of the next block, the rooms stepped back diagonally. I was not the only one doing the same thing, a couple of the other senior residents were just emerging from the other blocks. eep. That would be a fire then. We returned inside our block to retrieve the fire extinguishers to train on the balcony. We could in fact by now hear the sirens approaching through the village. By the time they not arrived, but managed to get to us, the fire was no longer spreading. It took them a while to get in to get the fire out. A diamond, I said. Yes indeed. So C block spreadeagled the underpass through the front to the mound outside the front, whereas at the back of the quad a covered roof reached from the warden's ground floor room over the drive and the bike shed. This was precision-built with the building to a height that would accommodate a fire engine or ambulance gaining entry to the quad should that be necessary. However, it turned out that by 1990 fire engines had grown, because this one couldn't get in to the quad, and because the middle room in C blockwas pretty darn much as far away from the entrance as physically possible, neither had they hoses that would reach either. They had to join us with extinguishers (well, replace us by then) until the second engine arrived with longer hoses. It turned out someone had left a candle lit on their heater, with the curtains undrawn and the balcony door open, thus draughting the curtain in to the flame. When I say left, I mean gone to the bar and left it. It wasn't as though we didn't already have rules about leaving candles unattended but thereafter it was pretty much no candles full stop.

I muse on this for two reasons. One - whilst not particularly nostalgic - is that I have never (ok, we know when our start of term fire practices are, so yes, I have time to put my coat on and pick up my coffee on the way) again taken for granted a fire alarm going off. It's surprising how little respect one pays to something that one day could actually truly really save your life. Five seconds later leaving that night and I've been sprayed with glass and flames. Annoying, yes, but one, go, and two you learn where to go. So lesson one, which sadly I think you have to learn the hard way, and one hopes the hard way is with no damage to life, is that when a fire alarm goes off (any time, but definitely unexpectedly) get out of the bulding. Make sure you have paid attention to where you are supposed to get to and how. Some times you have less time than you think (never mind all the learning that comes from watching the fire service videos that show how a room can explode within 47 seconds).

Secondly, it's worth a fire practice not just measuring how quickly you can evacuate a building, but the whole process beyond this. So just as finding out that the fire engine actually can't enter the quad, a review of fire procedures everywhere is healthy. So, tonight, a couple of things disturb me, that I could probably have not really noticed if you ever asked me without seeing 300 almost enebriated to well oiled and high-heeled students, gowns flapping everywhere trying to leave Hatfield main dining hall.(If you want to follow the next bit, you might want some reference or a map!) One is that the students who finally left via the annex fire door to the Fellows' Garden then followed the path between M stairs and the kitchen round under the chapel to the main college drive. Fair enough, only that technically brought them back nearer to where the fire alarm was sounding from. And er, there is no other way out of the fellows' garden unless you scale the wall down to the river... And those we got on to the tennis court - therein lies the first problem - if you were trying to evacuate the whole of college, they wouldn't fit worse than they didn't fit tonight. But, what absolutely horrified me was that we still expect them to congregate on the tennis court, in a fire. If we have a secondary meeting point, I don't think I have ever been told it. You would have to left along the Bailey toward the the grassed area behind the Cathedral east wall, as you'd expect a fire engine to be coming up the Bailey from the right. However, if you had all the students on the tennis court, and the faulty alarm in C22 turned out to be a real fire in C stairs or Kitchen stairs, and the windows blew out, then there would be a problem. Firstly, I wouldn't like to try and turn a fire engine in to College gates, although it may well be possible, but I wonder if they try places like that when they take delivery of a new generation of engines (and, similarly - betcha they can't get right up to Castle's quad either...). Secondly, if the fire were, for example, Kitchen stairs, those people leaving via the Fellows' Garden - do they stay congregated outside the bar, and doing counts then would be quite tricky. But worst of all, I was just looking at all the humanity on the tennis court. It was dark, and they were gowned. The tennis court is rarely used as a carpark, so it was empty, as were the three parking places in the quad itself, but there is a double gate in to the tennis court opposite the entrance to Kitchen stairs, where they were crammed in, a single gate to the right of this leading to the Gatehouse stairs, and then one single gate at the other end, leading out onto the very narrow path behind the boiler house behind the church back wall to the blue gate out the side of Rectory on to Bow Lane. These three single gates are the size, basically, (width, certainly-possibly higher, but that's not much help) as a door. The double gates on to the tennis court are big double gates, and were chocka. But, having got them IN to the tennis court, they are now 300 students within 3-5 metres of College buildings on each side, penned in by a 12 foot high fence. With two titchy ordinary-sized doors out of that. Penned. So, if we keep my potential fire in Kitchen stairs (or, clearly, perhaps in the Kitchen which happens to be below Kitchen stairs, no kidding), then we have 300 students penned into a cage with 12 foot high fence and one big and  two little gates out of it. Of these, the big gate and the Gatehouse gate would be out of action as they led back to the fire. The also lead to the main gate of College, which one hopes would have a fire engine stuck in it. There is a large gate out the back of the bar, next to the laundry at the bottom of J stairs. This would be a good exit route for those stuck behind the hall in the Fellows' Garden, if they can get out of the Fellows' Garden round the MCR Pace buildings into the Jevons quad to get to that gate. The 300 students penned on the tennis courts cannot reach this gate. That leaves 300 students penned on the tennis court inside their 12 foot high  (pretty strong) fence with the one little gate out the back to the narrow path to the single gate to Rectory. In fact once they get out the back of the tennis court it's possible to go down the Rectory fire excape to the car park and out of the large back gates onto Bow Lane and Kingsgate Bridge. But you have to get out of the tennis court first. The path along the east length of the tennis court, where A & B stairs doors are, is about 4 cosy students wide, and as it's so close to the buildings and there's no congregation point really sizeable in front of Rectory, it isn't likely you would automatically send students down that path rather than on to the tennis court in the first place. So my 300 students remain penned on the tennis court maybe only 5 m from a fire blowing out windows, while the fire engine tries to get in to the front gates, all trying to re-evacuate out of a normal door-sized gate.

Now, I'm not much of a pessimist really, but when you put the first lesson with the second lesson, and assume that if there were windows exploding from quad-facing Kitchen stairs, students would get on to the tennis court faster than loiter around in the quad as they did tonight (though we'd be leading the first of them out into it until we realised where the fire was and then leading them through the corridor past the SCR and out the lower ground floor passageways either out the back to the car park or back up and out of A stairs out to Rectory - either way narrow narrow corridors and we're talking 300 students here. But in 10 years I don't think I have ever - well I know I have never - received any level of detail about where to evacuate to and assemble in the case of fire from various points around college. As one of the longest serving tutors, this now bothers me. Or at least it doesn't bother me, as I've just evaluated all options for evacuating students from all the various buildings beyond those described here, and could confidently do that in grim circumstances. But I don't know if others would think the same. It's entirely possible that there may have been some addition to the tutors' file that has only appeared on Blackboard rather than in my paper version, and no, I don't make it to many college meetings since I moved to Middlesbrough, but before that I never missed one and it never came up. I've also played a part in many initial tutor training sessions and I absolutely know it's never been covered. So let's just hope that there is never a real fire! Sure, it's not like Penny and I were handling it alone. The porters were out when they'd been to investigate the alarm and they presumably have very detailed evacuation plans. But still.  I will never ever forget the night that I nearly sat and ignored a fire alarm that nearly caused me harm, and so I'm glad I've mentally done the exercise of evacuation in my head. 

Note: Fire extinguishers are damn heavy and actually therefore pretty tricky to use if you're not a rugby player. I doubt they've got a lot littler in 18 years.  And, how many of you know where the nearest one to your office is anyway?! And,even in January, it's pretty warm standing within 3 metres of a fire blowing out doors and windows