The Daily Campus

Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Erik Kong Fire alarms in the West Campus and Graduate Residence Halls as well as other 20 buildings campus-wide are too quiet.

The fire alarms in West Campus Residence Halls, Graduate Student Residence Halls and 20 other faculty and teaching buildings are not loud enough.

The alarms themselves still work, but they do not meet required decibel levels, according to Jim Bradley, UConn's associate vice president of architectural and engineering services.

A similar issue was discovered in the South Campus Residence Halls but was corrected over the summer, according to Bradley.

The problems in West and the Graduate Residences will be fixed by November as part of a larger expansion project.

Both West and the Graduate Residence Halls are currently undergoing a "pretty substantial upgrade," according to Bradley. The upgrade will bring the buildings up to par with others on campus by installing a system that will alert firefighters to where inside a building an alarm was triggered before they leave the firehouse.

In an Aug. 31 memo obtained by The Daily Campus, from Bradley to Thomas Ritter, the chairman of UConn's Construction and Management Oversight Committee, the issues in the faculty and teaching buildings were "identified by OSBI [Office of the State Building Inspector] and communicated in a letter to the University dated August 9."

The memo went on to state that a building-by-building examination of buildings that don't meet code will begin Sept. 18 and afterwards a plan will be created to correct the problems.

Bradley said that the issues were "at a level that will allow time to correct [the problems]," and that the buildings were safe. He said that renovations, door changes, carpeting and wall coverings could all interfere with the way sound traveled through the buildings and cause them to fall below code.

The list of the 20 faculty and staff buildings that did not pass inspection is kept by UConn Fire Marshal Michael McGovern who was contacted by The Daily Campus Wednesday but did not return calls seeking comment.

UConn has had previous issues with fire alarms in residential buildings. In late 2004, problems were discovered in several residences that did not meet fire code requirements and lacked fire alarms in critical areas.

According to the Nov. 12, 2004 issue of The Daily Campus, at the time students were told they were safe in the buildings. However, further inspections in what was then called the Charter Oak Suites and Apartments revealed flaws so serious that the buildings had to be put under surveillance by fire and police patrols.



Contact Andrew Porter at
Andrew.Porter@UConn.edu

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