Fire safety and preparedness in SLU’s residential halls lacking in some areas

By Lia Basden

Kevin Murati had just gotten out of the shower when his roommate heard a knock on their apartment door. It was one of the apartment residents he was responsible for as a resident advisor (RA), coming to tell him there was a fire in their apartment. Murati rushed to the door and tried to find out more about what was going on.

“They had a stove and the stove had issues, I guess, the burner was sparking…it was bad. So she put something on the burner and it sparked up and she left the room and came back and there was a fire, a grease fire,” Murati, an RA in the Village apartment complex on Saint Louis University's campus, said.

SLU's Village apartments, an R1 occupancy complex

According to SLU’s 2021 Annual Fire and Security Report, this fire was the sole fire in a residential hall during the 2020 calendar year. The report also shows that most residential hall fires happen in on-campus apartments, which feature a kitchen in every unit.

Darren Gaertner, SLU’s technology manager, said that the Village apartments, one of three apartment complexes on campus, is an R1 occupancy complex while all the other residential halls on campus are R2 occupancy. This difference, he said, is due to the ability to exit outside from the apartment itself and the lack of interior hallways.

Michael Parkinson, SLU’s emergency preparedness coordinator, said that one way this building code difference manifests is in the fire drills done by the residential halls every year. Most residential halls participate in one fire drill a semester. However, he said in the Village and Grand Forest apartments, not every building in the complex does a fire drill each semester. Instead, a section of the buildings in the complexes are chosen for a fire drill. Parkinson said the buildings who participate in a fire drill rotates each semester.

Taylor Stalling, a junior at SLU and an RA for the Village apartments, said she thinks it would be good for the Village to have more regular fire drills in each building.

“Especially in a place like the Village where people are cooking, and a lot of times cooking for the first time,” Stalling said. She also said that each unit in the Village has a fire extinguisher, but she doesn’t think many residents would know how to use it.

Last year, Stalling said she was an RA in Grand Hall, which does not have kitchens in each unit. However, she said the fire alarms would go off frequently, often multiple times in one day or night, without an apparent reason.

“It definitely does make people not trust it, not only students but also parents who are sending their children there,” Stalling said about the frequent fire alarms. This was a big stressor for the RAs, who would have to manage the chaos every time an alarm went off, said Stalling.

SLU's Grand Hall, an R2 occupancy building

Parkinson also commented on the frequent alarms in Grand Hall and said that one of his biggest fears is students not evacuating because they assume the fire alarm is false. He said they’ve thought about adjusting the fire alarms to be less sensitive but are worried it will allow something more serious to slip under the radar if they do so.

“We always want to have the best system in place,” Parkinson said. He also said that Gaertner works every year submitting bids to upgrade fire safety systems on campus.

Parkinson said that he hopes that fire safety is talked about in all buildings by all RAs during a floor meeting at the beginning of the year.

“If not, then that’s something we need to work on because there should at least be a conversation about what should happen,” Parkinson said.

Murati said he goes over fire safety with his residents at the beginning of each semester. “Fire safety is important,” he said. “Never leave an open fire, like a stove that’s on, unattended, especially if it’s in the middle of cooking.”