Representatives from the Charlottesville Fire Department teamed up members of the University’s office of Environmental Health and Safety and the Charlottesville Property Maintenance office Thursday afternoon to lead a door-to-door fire safety campaign in student off-Grounds housing areas.
Pat Lampkin, vice president and chief student affairs officer, said to students in an email the “Stop and Knock” campaign is part of National Fire Prevention month and an ongoing effort to educate University students, especially those living off Grounds, about potential fire hazards.
The pamphlets distributed as part of the door-to-door campaign included information about the January fire that destroyed a student-occupied house on Wertland Street.
“I never saw it coming,” said third-year Engineering student Steven Harris, one of the students living in the house at the time. “I wouldn’t have thought that there would ever be a house fire anywhere at U.Va. in my four years here, and the one that happened happened to me.” Harris said he now checks to ensure that his fire alarms and smoke detectors work.
The fire occurred at 5 a.m. and the sleeping residents of the house were alerted only when sanitation workers threw stones at the windows of the house. Though none of the 11 occupants were injured, there was significant damage to the property and several of the students’ cars.
The Wertland fire started when an unknown ignition source, most probably a cigarette or firework, set a sofa on fire that had been sitting on the house’s porch.
“The other big concern is the upholstered furniture on the porches,” Charlottesville Deputy Fire Chief Britt Grimm said. “In most cases, the front doors of the houses are the primary means of egress of the house.”
Grimm said when porch furniture catches fire, it can block potential exits. “There’s no detector on the outside of the house, and the inside detector won’t activate until it’s potentially too late,” he said.
Grimm advises removing upholstered furniture from the porch and refraining from smoking around such objects.
Student dorms feature built-in electronic fire alarms, though Grimm advised students check battery-operated alarms weekly to make sure they are functional.
In addition to handing out the pamphlets, firefighters also informed residents of useful programs, such as the Fire Department’s initiative to install smoke detectors in houses free of charge.
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