Students forced to flee from smoke-filled high rise fire while vacationing in Mexico
Fire on spring break in Acapulco demonstrates the importance of knowing what to do – no matter where you are
BELCHERTOWN, MA March 19, 2008 - A fire broke out in a high-rise hotel in Acapulco where students were staying during spring break. According to a number of media reports, students were forced to flee through smoke-filled corridors and there were some reports of students tying bed sheets together to climb down the exterior of the building. Fortunately, there were no student fatalities or serious injuries reported.
This fire vividly demonstrates that a fire can break out, no matter where you are, and it is so critically important to know what to do – always. Last October, seven students who were on vacation from Clemson University and the University of South Carolina were killed in a fire in a beach house that belonged to the family of one of the students.
Fire safety education can teach students how to prevent a fire and how to properly react to one if it should break out in their residence hall, off-campus house, apartment or in a movie theater, a nightclub or a hotel while they are on vacation. Campus fire safety extends far beyond the confines of the campus and beyond the school year. These are, literally, lessons for life.
The People’s Burn Foundation and Campus Firewatch have teamed up to develop a fire safety training program for students called To Hell and Back: College Fire Survival that will be shipped, free of charge, to every fire department, college and university in the country at the end of April. This program has been designed in a way to engage today’s student demographic and provide them with the vital information they need to protect themselves, their friends and their roommates. THB is being launched at the Fire Department Instructors Conference in Indianapolis in April and is being made possible through a Fire Prevention and Safety Grant from the Department of Homeland Security.
“Today’s students get their information in a totally different way,” said Shawn Longerich, director of the People’s Burn Foundation. “We had to develop a program that will cut through a lot of the ‘noise’ that they are regularly exposed to and give them the information they need to avoid tragedies such as the one we saw last October and the close call that just happened in Acapulco.”
“THB is being built off of the results of a study that Campus Firewatch and PBF did last year,” added Ed Comeau, publisher of Campus Firewatch. “We learned a lot about what students don’t know about fire safety. What was important was that once they realized how little they did know, they were hungry for information. To Hell and Back: College Fire Survival will help in filling that information gap.”
Important tips that students and parents should always remember include:
- Know two ways out, no matter where you are
- React to every fire alarm as if it is real – someday it will be
- Install smoke alarms and make sure they are always working
- Look for housing or lodging that is equipped with automatic fire sprinklers. They save lives.
- Use candles responsibly.
- The leading cause of fatal fires is careless disposal of smoking materials. Don’t be a statistic
A copy of the landmark study “Student Views and Attitudes Towards Burn and Fire Safety” can be downloaded from Campus Firewatch’s website.
The People's Burn Foundation (PBF) was established as a nonprofit organization in 1997 by Della Hines, a burn survivor, after she suffered the loss of two of her three children in a 1991 apartment fire. PBF develops national burn prevention programs as well as provides support to burn survivors throughout Indiana.
Campus Firewatch, in publication since 2000, is a monthly electronic newsletter focusing solely on campus fire safety. It is published by Ed Comeau, the former chief fire investigator for the National Fire Protection Association and founding director of the non-profit Center for Campus Fire Safety.
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