When City Councilmember Patrice Winter was a resident advisor at a Virginia Commonwealth University dormitory in the 1970s, a fire broke out and nobody knew what to do.
As students emptied out onto the lawn, fire trucks still had not arrived on scene because nobody knew how to call the fire department.
"This was before 9-1-1," she said.
It’s a scenario that George Mason University officials and the City of Fairfax Fire Department do not want to happen here. Andrew Wilson, the city’s fire marshal and assistant fire chief, got the idea for the resident advisor fire training after he heard about a similar program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The one-day seminar teaches all of GMU’s resident advisors critical skills in the event of a fire in one of their dorms.
The seminar is not meant to teach the students how to fight the fires themselves, but rather "to make them better prepared to deal with the fire department when the fire department shows up."
The seminars, one on Wednesday, Aug. 15, and another on Friday, Aug. 17, taught nearly 100 GMU students skills such as using a fire extinguisher and evacuating a building. The city bused the students to the city’s Colonial Avenue fire training grounds around 9:30 a.m., and they stayed until about 3 p.m.
The students learned about the difficulty of dealing with fires, from a firefighters’ perspective.
"What we want them to understand is what it takes to actually accomplish these things," said Wilson.
The students advanced a hose, about six at a time, in what the fire department would do with about two or three people. And if any of the students were uncomfortable with any of the exercises, they could excuse themselves from it.
"We take health and safety very seriously," said City Fire Capt. Richard Miller.
AN IMPORTANT skill emphasized during the seminar was teamwork. Everyone benefits when people work together during a fire, Miller said.
The fire training is just one day of the nine-day mandatory resident advisor training for GMU students. Winter said she was thrilled to see the collaboration between the university and the city for something so important to public safety.
"Being able to reach out and work together— I thought that was great," Winter said.
It’s the second year the city has hosted the program, and last year Wilson said it was most of the students’ favorite day of their resident advisor training. Since resident advisors must complete the nine-day training whether they’re veterans RAs or not, Wilson said some of the day’s activities were repetitive for the returning RAs.
"We hope to switch it up next year for the ones who were here this year," he said.
Expansions and upgrades to the city’s training facility are expected to be complete by next year too, he said. Additional classroom space and some more high-tech simulations will be available. Wilson said he also hopes to add CPR training for the returning students next year.
Currently, the training center features a lot. Everything is run on propane, so the controllers of the simulated fires have the ability to turn the fires on and off, should something go wrong. The main training tower is four stories tall, including the attic. It features two rooms equipped with propane fire simulators, in the form of what looks like stoves. A smoke machine emits thick fire-like smoke, to give firefighters an idea of the conditions they’ll face during rescues.
The GMU students did not experience any simulated fires during the seminar, other than a small fire they each put out with a fire extinguisher. They did have to crawl through the thick smoke, though, in the event they might have to help evacuate their residence halls during a fire.
The smoke is produced from a liquid smoke tank powered by nitrogen. It is non-toxic.
"It’s like rock concert smoke," said Wilson.
Katie Raney, a returning GMU resident advisor, attended the seminar both last year and this year, and said the information taught is invaluable to her resident advisor responsibilities.
"It really drives home fire safety and things we need to pay attention to in the residence halls," said Raney.