On March 4, 1908, a fire broke out in Likvio Primary School In Colinwood, Ohio. Among the 9 -year -old students, Nils Thompson, was, in a desperate attempt to escape fire, from a window of the second floor. He recovered from his fall, searched Niles in the frantic way the students fleeing for his young brother, Thomas. Unable to find it, Niles ran to the burning building.
Two Tomson brothers died with 170 other children. Nineteen is so badly burned that their bodies cannot be identified.
These deaths were prevented. As a result of the regulations raised by Fire LakeView, along with many other fires, building materials are now fire resistance, and most schools are equipped with smoke, machine guns and extinguishers. These regulations make schools incredibly safe – to the extent that fire training may be exaggerated. Is it time to start calling again?
Joseph Milan, Director of Life Safety in Fire in My high school, waysHe thinks that. He calls them “outdated”, noting that new technology and building materials make fires small and fast response times. “I have never discovered that.”
While it is difficult to shake the Niles Thompson image, we need to analyze the situation logically. New York Schools is legally required to have eight evacuation exercises per year. I found that these exercises take approximately 30 minutes, not at the time that it takes to re -focus after that. Collectively, K-12 students in New York, who number 2.4 million students at the age of 12 million hours per year, will spend fire on fire instead of learning. This is 14 for life!
Students are not the only ones who pay a price. At $ 35,000 annually per student – or $ 28 per hour – taxpayer training costs $ 268 million per year. National cost in billions.
But at least they save lives. right?
no.
Use Data of the National Fire Accident Report SystemI found that the annual probability of school construction fire during school hours is 1 out of 5000 (except for the confined fires that can be extinguished without the fire department).
Even in the event of a rare fire, it is not particularly dangerous: the death rate is so low that the FEMA connects it to scratch. For the few deaths that occur, the speed of evacuation is not always a factor. The last victim was a self -complaining student.
Maybe not the fires that are dangerous, but people? Traditional wisdom indicates that emergency situations cause comprehensive panic, which leads to fatal seals. Traditional wisdom is wrong. Research reveals that in emergency situations, people tend to remain calm and help each other because the concentration of victims is transmitted from “me” to “we”. During 11/1, people went on the stairs in one file and grabbed the door open to each other. The crowds are more dangerous when the risks are superficial, for example, rushing to the best purchase on Black Friday.
Fires are not a physical danger, nor the unique crowds. However, our attempt to resolve this issue has significant financial and educational costs.
The UK has more school fires, thanks to the two professionals, however, schools must have one exercise annually. Nevertheless, Safar UK’s children died in non -residential construction fires last year. Evacuation mechanics are not complicated. You are moving to the nearest exit and walking in a fast but organized way. It does not take eight exercises. If New York State adopts the UK’s approach, it will save 234 million dollars without any safety effect. The assignment of eight fire exercises per year is similar to asking people to wear helmets on the sidewalk.
Everyone would like to be in a world in which their neighbors and children feel enabled to deal with a state of emergency, but this is not the emergency that we must prepare for. According to the Center for Disease Control, adolescents are more likely to die with an overdose of a fire in school, however most children in a healthy classroom do not know how to manage Naluxon, CPR, or alcohol poisoning.
Because we get to know safety through frightening tales instead of data, our concerns have nothing to do with reality. Students should learn to put their perception of risks in the facts. The time we currently dedicate to fire exercises provide an opportunity for the Data -dependent death prevention course, or DDFPCC, for short sorting. Niles Thompson died 116 years ago. There are real risks to processing. It’s time to move from demonstration.
Kemble-Curry is large at the Avenues School in Manhattan.