Firefighters fill OSU house with fog for safety lessons
By Matt Tullis
The Columbus Dispatch (Ohio)
Copyright 2006 The Columbus Dispatch
All Rights Reserved
Thick smoke choked the hallways as the fraternity brothers crawled, two by two, out of the Delta Theta Sigma house.
The lights were out, and smoke detectors blared. Men ran into each other and the walls, their knees grinding on the hard tile floor.
One made a wrong turn and crawled into the bathroom. He was lucky this was just practice.
Yesterday, the Columbus Division of Fire filled the off-campus fraternity house at Ohio State University with theatrical fog as part of a fire-safety training program.
In the past six years, there have been 89 fire fatalities at dormitories or off-campus student housing across the country. Ohio leads the way with 12, according to the Center for Campus Fire Safety.
The OSU Public Safety Department is reaching out to all the Greek houses with the program this year, said Joel Schaefer, a senior security supervisor with the department. It’s basic fire-safety tips, such as how best to get out of a burning building and how to prevent a fire in the first place.
The program was started shortly after five students died April 13, 2003, in a fire at an apartment house on E. 17th Avenue. Investigators labeled it an arson; a suspect was arrested but later released.
“That had a lot to do with it,” Schaefer said of that fire. “It raised a concern for us to go off-campus. By working with the Greeks, it’s a good starting point.”
The Delta Theta Sigma brothers invited members of other fraternities to yesterday’s practice.
So far, 46 percent of all the Greek houses near the OSU campus have gone through the voluntary training, Schaefer said.
Delta Theta Sigma treasurer Josh Steinmetz said with seven new guys moving into the house within the past week, many of them freshmen, it was a good time for the safety drill.
Nick Atterholt, an 18-year-old freshman, didn’t think moving through the smoke-filled hallway would be that difficult. He quickly found out he was wrong.
“As soon as I crawled out, I hit my head on the wall,” he said, “and it wasn’t even that smoky.”
Atterholt said he knew his way around the house fairly well after one week, but that didn’t help much in the haze.
“You know where you’re supposed to be going, but it’s a lot more difficult when you can’t see anything,” he said.
The crawl wasn’t any easier for the guys who have been living there for several years. Jeremiah Miller and Steve Muza, president and vice president of the fraternity, respectively, were amazed at how hard it was to get their bearings in the dark smoke.
“Everything seemed a lot longer,” Muza said. “That’s what, a 10-second walk? Not even.”
No one in the house respects the dangers of fire more than Miller, who studies forestry. He has spent portions of the past two summers fighting wildfires in Minnesota, Montana and Idaho, and plans to do that full time after graduating.
“You have to see it to really respect how fast it moves,” said Miller, who’s the unofficial fire marshal of the Delta Theta Sigma house.