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SUMMER 2015
Special Focus: National Campus Fire Safety Month 2015In this issue, we are going to take a look at National Campus Fire Safety Month and the resources that are available for you to use in reaching out to students at your school or in your community. Engaging students in fire safety is a chal-lenge, but there are a lot of free tools that you can call upon in your efforts.
Twelve governors signed proclamations in 2005 for the first National Campus Safety Month (NCFSM), and since then, over 300 have been signed, as well as resolutions in the United States House of Representatives and Senate.
The idea for NCFSM came out of a conversation I had back then with a staffer from the late Congresswomen Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a strong advocate for campus fire safety, who suggested that I make a request for a Congressional resolution that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. This also gave me the idea of asking the nation’s governors to also sign proclamations, and I sent out a letter, co-signed by parents who have lost children in college/university fires. I have continued to do this every year, and last year we had 37 that were signed, the most ever.
What has the impact been of NCFSM?I certainly can’t point to any direct impact that NCFSM has had on campus fire safety. However, as part of an overall education and awareness campaign, changes are happening. The highest number of college/university fatalities occurred in 2006-2007 when 20 people were killed. Since that horrific year, there has been a steady decline, and in
IN THIS ISSUE 1 Off-campus fatal fire - Washington, DC
1 Special Focus: National Campus Fire Safety Month 2015
1 Campus Firewatch Radio is on the Air!
2 Engaging students in fire safety
4 Campus Fire Safety Month Proclamations
11 National Campus Fire Safety Month Resources
12 After the Fire
13 Did YOU Know? A new campus fire safety video series from the Michael Minger H. Foundation
15 Resources available at Campus Firewatch
Nina Brekelmans, a graduate student at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, was killed in an off-campus fire on early Wednesday, June 3. DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services was dispatched shortly after 2:30 a.m., accord-ing to DC-FEMS Public Information Officer Tim Wilson, to a fire in a three-story rowhouse in the 1600 block of Riggs Road. The initial first alarm was quickly upgraded to a second alarm. Fire fighters had difficulty gaining access into the building because of security bars on the first-floor windows, and after the fire was extinguished, two victims were found. One was Nina Brekelmans, who had just graduated from Georgetown on May 15 with a Master of Arts in Arab Studies, according to a statement from Georgetown University. She was planning on continuing her studies and had been awarded a Fulbright grant.
According to the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, a second victim died in the fire, 24-year-old Michael Patrick McLoughlin, who was not a student. In media reports, both victims were found on the third floor. Two other residents were transported to the hospital with injuries and three fire fighters had minor injuries.
A later news story in the Washington Post, reported that the building was not licensed by the city for rental units, which is required.
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Campus Firewatch Radio is on the air!
Campus Firewatch Radio is a new series of podcasts starting on August 5th. Every two weeks, I’ll feature interviews and discussion on a wide range of topics and interviews with experts in the field
Off-campus fatal fire - Washington, DC
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Campus Firewatch is a publication of writer-tech.com, llc, a technical writ-ing firm specializing in fire safety. All of the material contained in Campus Firewatch is copyrighted and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.
Campus fire safety is a complex issue. The information in this newsletter is provided to help you in your efforts to provide as fire-safe a community as possible. However, it is no replacement for professional advice. For further assistance, contact your local fire department.
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Engaging students in fire safetyBy Ed Comeau
I find that I seem to get into a rut, starting off articles with the same mantra, about what a challenge it is to teach fire safety to college students-and it is. However, a lot of schools and communities are doing it effec-tively, and the biggest indicator is that we are clearly seeing a downturn in the number of fatal fires, from a high of 20 in 2006/2007 to a low of four in the past two years. I am attributing much of this to the aware-ness and education efforts that everyone is doing, from the statewide proclamations for National Campus Fire Safety Month to fire extinguisher training at RA fire academies-all of it helps.
I am also coming to realize the importance of not teaching students about fire safety but, instead, engaging them in fire safety. This may seem like just semantics, but I think it is much more than that, and an important one, and fire safety engagement can be a multi-pronged approach with different facets that have different impacts.
Engaging students in fire safety does take more work, and may not be as widespread an approach as doing a presentation, for example, but the return can be more beneficial. Here are a few examples and compari-sons, and these apply for both schools that are doing engagement as well as fire departments looking for opportunities to reach students.
PowerPoint presentations, this is the tried-and-true, easy to do approach. However, students see PowerPoint presentations (a number of them bad) in their classrooms every day. It may not be the most effective way to communicate with this demographic or even with others. Think about it, how many presen-tations have you sat through with bullet points, the presenter reading the slide projected on the screen and cartoon images? How many of them do you remember or that made a difference to you? It’s the same with the students, and probably even more so. (Maybe it is this generation’s equivalent of an 8mm filmstrip in science class?)
On the other hand, fire extinguisher training is a good example of an easily done approach where they get a chance to blow off a fire extinguisher (legally). Easy to set up in a visible part of campus, get lots of students going by and giving them a chance to do something fun. Engaging!
Brochures, pamphlets and handouts. You might have
to do this as one of the things on a list of “must haves,” but effectiveness? What is the return on this effort? Probably not a lot, then is it really worth doing?
Campus Fire Safety Community Service Projects. These are incredibly engaging opportunities for students, and they do take work to set them up, but I really believe the effectiveness on these is very high. By having stu-dents work alongside fire fighters, going into homes and installing smoke alarms, is a great way for them to learn fire safety by doing fire safety, and giving back to the community at the same time. Many schools are requiring community service hours from their students, as well as fraternities and sororities. Faith-based orga-nizations on campus are another place that you can go to. And this is a great opportunity to build a town/gown partnership.
Also, once you start doing a few of them, you might find that they become more institutionalized, easier to do, and the students may start coming to you. This could also be an occasion to set up a program that is student run, working in partnerships between the students, school and fire department. We have done a number of these in high-risk communities, and it is an incredibly rewarding effort.
Social media. By having the students do your social media outreach you can accomplish several goals. First, students know social media, and they probably know it better than anyone else, so why not let them do it for you? Yes, you hear the horror stories of social media gone bad, and it does happen, but the benefits far out-weigh the occasional hiccup. Also, students are looking for real-world experience that they can put on their resumes (or LinkedIn profiles), so they are going to be motivated to do put their best effort forward. They get valuable experience, you get an effective outreach to the students. Sounds like a winning partnership to me, whether it is the school, the fire department or both working with the students.
You could also have the students write articles about fire safety for student newspapers or websites. They could interview fire safety experts from the school and the fire department or from national organizations. They could talk with survivors or parents who can give first-hand accounts of the impact of a fire. (As part of this project, I can put them in touch with a network of parents who have lost children and are willing to share their experience.)
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of campus fire safety. Some of the topics on the early shows include National Campus Fire Safety Month, Ten Things to Try, engaging students in fire safety and much more. Each podcast will be about 20 minutes, something you can easily lis-ten to on a commute or during a workout.
You can find Campus Firewatch Radio at www.campus-firewatch.com/multimedia/radio where you can stream or download each episode. You can also find them in iTunes where you can subscribe and have it automatically downloaded to your smartphone or computer as each episode becomes available. You can also follow Campus Firewatch Radio on Twitter @cfwradio.
Have suggestions for a topic or someone to interview? Drop me a note at [email protected] or on Twitter @cfwradio and let me know, I would love to hear your ideas!
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There are a lot more opportunities for engaging students in fire safety, and probably the best way to really dig these out is to ask the students themselves, what would work, what would they like to do? What opportunities are they looking for to give back to the community and to help build up their portfolio with real world experi-ence?
Just ask them, see what they come up with!
At the 2015 Campus Fire Safety and Emergency Management Professional Development Conference and Expo in Columbus, Ohio, put on by Randy Hormann from CampusFireSafety.com, (and if you haven’t been, I suggest you look into
ENGAGING STUDENTS IN FIRE SAFETY - CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE.
it for next year, well worth it, March 7 and 8, 2016) I met Paul Otenti from Paul Smiths College in upstate New York. He did a presentation on his engagement efforts, that I though are very cre-ative, and from what he was saying, effective.
Some of them might be a bit unorthodox, such as using body bags. Yes, body bags. He puts them out on the lawn to symbolize the number of students that were killed in fires, and it definitely gets attention.
Another tactic he uses is during fire drills. The state mandates that one of the drills be done when it is dark, and he takes it a step further and does them late at night, when many students are asleep. But he is out there with them, in his shorts and T-shirt (and remember, this is in upstate New York) going through it just like them, which he says helps to cut down on the complaints.
Outside of his office is a large wall that students from the Art Club are painting. Paul provides the paint, they provide the creativity, and he has an opportunity to engage with them on a regular basis.
He uses giveaways such as zipper pulls at his fire safety talks and has the security officers giving out prizes to the tenth student they see with a zipper pull on their backpack, or the most zipper pulls. And each time he gives them out they are a different color, so he gets a metric of how much engagement he has had with the students in the different programs.
As I mentioned earlier, you can learn more about what Paul is doing by watching the at Campus Firewatch Multimedia or in an upcoming episode of Campus Firewatch Radio.
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Case Study of Engaging StudentsYou can see an interview with Paul Otenti at Campus Firewatch Multimedia called “Creative Engagement.”
Paul will also be featured in an upcoming interview on Campus Firewatch Radio, which you can also find on iTunes.
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Campus Fire Safety Month ProclamationsEvery year, since 2005, a letter signed by 25 parents who have lost children in college/university-related fires has been sent to the nation’s governors, asking them to issue proclamations. Over 300 proclamations have been signed, as well as resolutions in the United States House of Representatives and the Senate. This has been a part of a national campaign to raise awareness of the importance of campus fire safety, and over this time we have seen the number of fire deaths drop from a high of 20 to four in the last two years. This is an incredible accomplishment that I would attribute to the effort everyone is doing on campuses and in communities across the country.
As of press time, we have had six proclamations issued with more to come. The current states include: Indiana, Massachusetts, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin
You can be a key part of this effort by contacting your governor’s office, requesting a proclamation (nothing speaks louder than hearing from a constituent). You can download a copy of the letter that was sent, along with suggested language for a proclamation, from the Campus Firewatch website. If you are successful, please let me know so that I can add your state to the list-and thanks!
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Campus Firewatch ● P.O. Box 1046 ● Belchertown, MA 01007 ● 1-413-296-1982 ● [email protected]
January 2, 2015
Dear Governor: Each of us signing this letter knows what it is like to have lost a loved one while they are away at college. This is a time in their lives of growth, learning and exploration, but it came to a tragic end from a fire that, so often, is preventable and avoidable. What students learn through fire safety education is not just to keep them safe for the time they are in college – they are literally lessons for life. As this letter is being written, at least 169 people have died in campus-related fires since January 2000, with 87% of them occurring in off-campus housing, and education and awareness are vital to helping stop this tragic loss of life. In the first semester of this year, three students have been killed in off-campus fires in South Dakota, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. As tragic as these fires are, however, we believe we are on a significant downward trend with last academic year being the lowest in history with four fire deaths. Across the nation, in all occupancies, there is a fire every 85 seconds, someone is injured every 33 minutes, and someone is killed every 2-1/2 hours. The leading cause of these fires is cooking, and the leading cause of all fatal fires is careless disposal of smoking materials-both very preventable, but only if people are taught what to do to avoid them from happening. This education can start in college and help build a fire-safe generation for the future. We would like to ask you to help raise this awareness by signing a proclamation designating September as Campus Fire Safety Month. Last year, we had 36 states issue proclamations, the highest ever, and since 2005, 300 proclamations have been signed. With your support, we can work on making sure that there are even fewer fire deaths in the coming year. Please join with us this September and make it a priority to promote campus fire safety awareness and support our efforts in providing safe housing for our young people who are our nation's future. If you should need any additional information, please contact Ed Comeau from Campus Firewatch at 413-296-1982 or [email protected]. Thank you for your support!
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Barrett Cohen Maineville, Ohio Brother of Austin (A.J.) Cohen March 12, 1979 – December 10, 2000 University of Dayton Dayton, Ohio
Donna Cohen Sarasota, Florida Mother of Austin (A.J.) Cohen March 12, 1979 – December 10, 2000 University of Dayton Dayton, Ohio
Dean and Patricia Dennis Cincinnati, Ohio Parents of Andrea Dennis September 21, 1982 - April 13, 2003 Ohio University Athens, Ohio (Ohio State University fire April 13, 2003)
Bob Fitzsimons Maryanne Fitzsimons Bob Fitzsimons Maryanne Fitzsimons Commack, NY Parents of Kerry Rose Fitzsimons January 21, 2012 Marist College Poughkeepsie, New York
Andy Grooms Ruidoso, New Mexico Father of Stephen Andrew Grooms October 16, 1981 - October 28, 2001 Catawba College Salisbury, North Carolina Rich and Darlene Heiden Rich and Darlene Heiden Racine, Wisconsin Parents of Brian Heiden January 26, 1984 – September 20, 2003 University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota
Donna Henson Leawood, Kansas Mother of Dominic Passantino April 12, 1980 - May 8, 1999 University of Missouri Columbia, Missouri
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Pamela Johnson Pamela Johnson Grifton, North Carolina Mother of Cody Pilkington November 14, 1985 - October 7, 2005 North Carolina State University Raleigh, North Carolina
Lettie Latiolais New Iberia, Louisiana Mother of Kurt J. Latiolais, II June 22, 1981 - October 18, 2003 Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Gail Minger Niceville, Florida Mother of Michael Minger June 24, 1979 - September 18, 1998 Murray State University, Kentucky Murray, Kentucky
Kathleen Moritz Evergreen Park, Illinois James Osborn Scottsdale, Arizona Parents of Tanner “TJ” Osborn September 22, 1982 - June 7, 2005 Chicago, Illinois
Christopher M Ross Sr. Sheboygan, Wisconsin Father of Christopher M Ross Jr. July 6, 1985- June 7, 2005 Chicago, Illinois Linda and Gary Schl itt ler Linda and Gary Schlittler Manchester, Missouri Parents of Brian Schlittler April 22, 1981 – November 29, 2006 University of Missouri St. Louis, Missouri
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Edye Smith Bethesda, Maryland Mother of Stephen Smith June 21, 1982 – April 10, 2005 Miami University Oxford, Ohio Jim Speckien Jim Speckien Vadnais Heights, Minnesota Parent of Amanda Speckien May 5, 1984 – September 20, 2003 University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota
Tim and Patty Talen Plymouth, Wisconsin Parents of Peter Joseph Talen August 24, 1984 - November 18, 2007 University of Wisconsin UWLAX La Crosse, Wisconsin
Doug and Linda Turnbull Milford, Ohio Parents of Julie Turnbull May 8, l983 - April 10, 2005 Miami University Oxford, Ohio
Kimberly Wencl Owatonna, Minnesota Mother of Elizabeth Wencl September 12, 1983 – September 20, 2003 University of Minnesota Minneapolis, Minnesota
Bonnie and Leon Woodruff Raleigh, North Carolina Parents of Benjamin Woodruff April 27, 1976 - May 12, 1996 University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, North Carolina
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Campus Fire Safety Month Proclamation
Proclamation
To express the support of the establishment of September as Campus Fire Safety Month, and for other purposes.
Whereas recent student-related housing fires in South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and other schools across the country have tragically cut short the lives of some of the youth of our Nation;
Whereas since January 2000, at least 169 people, including students, parents, and children have died in campus-related fires;
Whereas approximately 87 percent of these deaths have occurred in off-campus occupancies;
Whereas a majority of the students across the Nation live in off-campus occupancies;
Whereas a number of fatal fires have occurred in buildings where the fire safety systems have been compromised or disabled by the occupants;
Whereas it is recognized that automatic fire alarm systems and smoke alarms provide the necessary early warning to occupants and the fire department of a fire so that appropriate action can be taken;
Whereas it is recognized that automatic fire sprinkler systems are a highly effective method of controlling or extinguishing a fire in its early stages, protecting the lives of the building's occupants;
Whereas many students are living in off-campus occupancies, Greek housing, and residence halls that are not adequately protected with automatic fire sprinkler systems and automatic fire alarm systems or adequate smoke alarms;
Whereas it is recognized that fire safety education is an effective method of reducing the occurrence of fires and reducing the resulting loss of life and property damage;
Whereas students are not routinely receiving effective fire safety education throughout their entire college career;
Whereas it is vital to educate the future generation of our Nation about the importance of fire safety behavior so that these behaviors can help to ensure their safety during their college years and beyond; and
Whereas by developing a generation of fire-safe adults, future loss of life from fires can be significantly reduced: Now, therefore, be it
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Campus Fire Safety Month Proclamation
Resolved, That the Governor— (1) supports the establishment of September as Campus Fire Safety Month; (2) encourages schools and municipalities across the country to provide educational programs to all students during September and throughout the school year; and (3) encourages schools and municipalities to evaluate the level of fire safety being provided in both on- and off-campus student housing and take the necessary steps to ensure fire-safe living environments through fire safety education, installation of fire suppression and detection systems and smoke alarms and the development and enforcement of applicable codes relating to fire safety.
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National Campus Fire Safety Month Resources
Did YOU Know is a series of 13 videos with students asking, “Did you know smoking is the leading cause of fire deaths?” and other related questions, informing the viewers about important fire safety information, all in about 30 seconds. Each one has features three questions being asked by different students and can be streamed, downloaded or embedded on your website. The Minger Foundation produced these videos, working with Campus Firewatch.
The Alarming Truth is a video that tells the story of a fictional, yet based-in-reality, off-campus fire that kills a student. A cigarette thrown into the trash, a disabled smoke alarm, a fire that breaks out in the middle of the night, trapping the student on the second floor. These happen time and again, and this video tells the story and the impact on the family and friends. Produced by the Clery Center for Security on Campus, this video is also available for streaming, download and embedding. Included on the site are addi-tional resources such as a presentation guide and more. This was a partnership between the Clery Center, Philadelphia Fire Department, University of Pennsylvania, Rowan University, the Michael
H. Minger Foundation and Campus Firewatch.
9 Fires, a compelling short documentary about nine fires that happened within weeks of each other in residence halls, laboratories and off-campus housing and the impact that they had on the schools, community, families and friends. There are three chapters to this-residence halls, laboratories and, the most impactful one, off-campus fatal fires.
Posters that can be downloaded for RAs to use on their floors. These came about after a focus group the Minger Foundation, Campus Firewatch and Richmond (KY) fire department had with a group of RAs, asking them what they needed for resources, and surprisingly, posters was the num-ber one thing they said they could use. There are ten posters that you can download and print out.
Videos featuring students with disabilities talk-ing about the importance of fire safety as well as a Guide to Teaching Fire Safety to Students with Disabilities
Videos with RAs discussing the importance of fire alarms and knowing two ways out and an RA Guide to Teaching Fire Safety
Tip-a-Day Twitter campaign. Each September, Campus Firewatch does a daily tweet with a fire safety message that you can use and retweet out to your students using the hashtag #firetipaday. More information is on the CFW website, and they will be updated for 2015 during August.
The Campus Fire Information Sheet is a regularly updated snapshot of the number of fatal fires and trends that are occurring over the years. This can be useful when preparing press releases or writing articles about fire safety for the students.
Map of fatal campus-related fires. Since 2000, CFW has been tracking campus-related fatal fires and compiling information on them in a number of different formats. When you mouse over each of the incidents, a short description of the fire comes up.
The Fatal Campus Firelog is a compilation of these same incidents with thumbnail sketches of each of them. These anecdotal summaries can provide powerful information when making the case that these incidents do happen every year.
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There are free resources that you can use to engage students in fire safety, most developed under a series of DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grants to various organizations.
the past two years there have been a low of four. Each one of these is a tragedy, but it is certainly encouraging to see this significant change.
Since over four out of five of the deaths since 2000 have occurred in off-campus housing, where a vast majority of the students live, I really have to believe that it is education and awareness that is making the difference. I suspect that the stock of off-campus housing has not improved dramatically over time, as much of it is converted one- or two-family housing that is not going to see much change. In addition, student housing can often be overcrowded (to help reduce costs) which can create a very hazardous situation, and I don’t think that rents have gone down to help eliminate this problem.
And even when communities recognize the problem, it is often difficult to make a dent in it. In 2014, because of several fires that injured and killed Boston University students, the Boston Globe did a three-part series, The Shadow Campus, looking at off-campus housing problems in the city. They identified a number of overcrowded apartments with poor living conditions. As a result, Boston implemented a new inspection and registration program, but despite the numerous problems identified in the Globe’s series, no landlords have been cited for any of the problems. This points to the difficulty of policing and enforcing existing regulations.
The point is that many of the occupancy problems probably still exist, but we have seen a steady decline for 8 years, and that this may very well be attributable to what schools and communities are doing to raise awareness among their students.
At the same time, more resources have been developed for reaching out to the students (see accompanying articles in this issue). Schools are developing their own, and there are also many posters, videos, guides, maps and other free tools now available from Campus Firewatch, the Michael H. Minger Foundation, and the Clery Center for Security on Campus, many developed under FEMA Fire Prevention and Safety Grants.
I encourage you to visit these websites, look at the tools outlined in this issue of Campus Firewatch and use any that you think will help you engage your stu-dents in fire safety. If you have your own tools that you have created, please share them with me…and thanks!
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After the FireIn 2000, a devastating fire in Boland Hall at Seton Hall University in New Jersey killed three students and injured 56 more, and this fire was clearly a turning point in rais-ing awareness about campus fire safety. New Jersey passed legislation that not only mandated fire sprinklers in residence halls and Greek housing, but also provided the funding. Schools across the country looked at this tragedy and started evaluating the level of safety on their campuses.
Alvaro Llanos and Shawn Simons were freshman room-mates and thought that it was just another false alarm. However, when they opened the door to their room, they were faced with a hallway filled with heat and smoke. Both were severely burned and spent years of treatment and therapy.
Their story is an incredibly compelling one. While they were in the hospital, in comas, the New Jersey Star-Ledger started documenting what had hap-pened and what they were going through. Shawn was the first one to wake up, and they discussed with him the idea of continuing to follow their story, documenting what they had gone through. Shawn liked the idea, but was very adamant that only if it included Alvaro as well, and when Alvaro came out of his coma, he agreed.
The result was a Pulitzer Prize winning series by photographer Matt Rainey that, in turn, lead to the book “After the Fire” by Robin Gaby Fisher, a reporter at the Star-Ledger, and the book has been turned into a documen-tary of the same name.
Al and Shawn have dedicated themselves to telling their story to students across the country to raise awareness about fire safety and shared their thoughts in an interview with Campus Firewatch.
“It is unfortunate that we don’t take fire safety more seriously, not only in campus, but in general,” said Shawn. “We never expected it would happen to us when we went to college, but it did…we want to share our story and also tell students that there is going to be adversity in life, but you can overcome them.”
“We don’t want anyone to go through the same situation that we went through,” added Al, “it was tragic for our families and we want to show peo-ple that just because you are going through a tragic time, you can overcome it, it takes time and patience and you have to do everything in your power to overcome these obstacles.”
For four years, both men have been traveling across the country to colleges and universities, telling their story and showing the documentary. “We get great feedback from the students,” observed Al. “They are amazed at how strong-willed we are, overcoming this situation, and they never took fire safety seriously, but after hearing our story, seeing our documentary, they do realize it. You can see it in their faces and the questions they have afterwards…sometimes we have students that didn’t want to come, but then they are glad they did.”
In addition to colleges, they are now giving their messages at high schools as well. “Often, the last time the students got a fire safety message was in elementary school,” said Shawn. This is a chance to give them fire safety informa-
tion before they go off to college or go on to living in their own apartment or house after moving out of their parent’s home. They are emphasizing the importance of general fire safety, that it is important to know two ways out when you walk into a restaurant or a movie theater as well as a dorm or off-campus house.
The documentary came about when the director, Guido Verweyen, came across the book, took it home and read it in one night. “The next day he called Robin Gaby Fisher and asked if she thought we would be willing to have a documentary made, and we all immediately put our heads together and thought it would be a great idea,” said Shawn, realizing that telling the story visually could be a strong way to connect with today’s demographic.
Both men have been to hundreds of campuses and high schools in the United States and Canada and see, first hand, what schools are doing to educate their students, and both agree that there is a lot more being done, especially hands-on activities. Smoke trailers, side-by-side burns, fire extinguisher training are all approaches that are far more engaging to the students. “I think that there is more information out there, especially with social media and the Internet that makes them understand how important fire safety is,” observed Al. “Doing the PowerPoint presentation or handing them a pamphlet is not going to draw the attention of the students that are 18 years old,” added Shawn.
Hearing Al and Shawn tell their story, along with the documentary, is an incredible experience and one that the students long remember. If you are interested in having them come to your campus or community, you can reach them through their website at www.alvaroandshawn.com where you can also buy both the book and documentary After the Fire.
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For more information about Alvaro and Shawn, to buy the book or documentary “After the Fire,” visit their website
www.alvaraoandshawn.com.
Their story will be featured in an upcoming podcast on
Campus Firewatch Radio.
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Did YOU Know? A new campus fire safety video series from the Michael H. Minger FoundationBy Ed Comeau
Engaging students in fire safety is an ongoing challenge. Getting them involved and communicating to them effectively is something that every campus and community works towards.
The Michael H. Minger Foundation, working with Campus Firewatch, under-took this challenge and produced a series of 13 videos Did YOU Know? that is available for free from the Minger Foundation that you can stream, down-load or embed on your own website.
This series features students from the University of the Cumberlands in each video asking three questions, such as “Did you know, smoking is the leading cause of fatal fires?” and other questions on topics such as exits, cooking and much more. By quickly asking these questions, these students can make oth-ers more aware of simple fire safety messages.
As an added benefit, by engaging these students in the production, they all learned something about fire safety, and at the same time gave the videos more credibility with their peers. They learned fire safety by communicating fire safety!
In putting together this series, our goal was to keep each of the videos short, about 30 seconds to a minute. We also wanted to get a number of different fire safety messages out as well, which led to the idea of doing a whole series of them, mixing in different fire safety messages with different students. This was a challenge because, as fire safety professionals, don’t we all want to tell everyone everything they need to know to be fire safe? By limiting it to three messages in each video, we avoided the problem of message overload, as research has shown that people are able to retain up to three messages more easily-anything more, and they may not remember any of them.
They are all available online from the Minger Foundation at www.minger-foundation.org/did-you-know and can be streamed, downloaded or embed-ded along with closed-captioning as well. All at no charge since they were done under a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety grant.
Behind the scenesI’m discovering that it is easier than ever to do filming these days, and I’d like to take this opportunity to talk a bit about how we did it. However, I do want to throw in one major caveat-just because the technology is making it easier to film, doesn’t necessarily make us pros at it, and we’re learning a lot with every project!
We filmed Did YOU Know? at the University of the Cumberlands over the course of several days, with great support from the university, and the stu-
dents were enthusiastically on board. Pre-production is key to the success of any project, and the more time spent on planning and logistics makes the shoot go smoother and far more efficient. We did a scouting trip, met with the students and had innumerable planning calls putting together the shoot and the scripts. Google Docs and GoToMeeting are two great tools to help with the planning process-if you aren’t familiar with them, I would highly recommend them both. I use them on a regular basis at Campus Firewatch.
CrewWe were able to run with a small crew of four people and, if necessary, we probably could have had an even smaller crew. But having four people involved helped with the workload and also gave us more eyes on what we were doing.
EquipmentI have been getting questions on what equipment we used, so I’m going to give a bit of a detailed answer here. All of this equipment is what I would classify as entry-level, yet certainly provides enough quality to get the job done. In addition, the equipment choices were made based on versatility (a monopod that can double as a microphone boom pole, for example) and how it could be packed and used for travel (a Benro travel tripod, as another example).
CameraWe employed the Canon EOS Rebel T5i DSLR camera with an 18 to 55 mm lens. Typically used for still photographs, these cameras have come a long way and now incorporate video technology in them as well, making them versatile tools for a wide variety of projects. Probably the biggest limitation is that the screen on the back of the camera is small (it is on all of them) and an external monitor would be very helpful in checking focus and framing the shot.
SoundWhile the cameras have the ability to record sound, they have some serious limitations. Without a doubt, the on-camera microphone is very weak, so an external microphone is needed, whether it is a shotgun microphone or a lavaliere. It is possible to record the sound into the camera from an external microphone, but this model of camera does not have the ability to monitor the sound, which is very important to make sure that the sound levels are
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right and that there isn’t any extraneous background noise. For that reason, we put a Rode shotgun microphone on a Manfrotto compact monopod, which also doubled as a boom pole, and connected it into an external H1 Zoom recorder and had one of the crew responsible just for sound. We did record sound in-camera as well, creating a scratch track, which is important when syncing the sound up later with the video (and in an absolutely worst case scenario, may have to be your backup sound if something should hap-pen to the primary recording).
One important thing about sound is quality. Viewers are much more tolerant of low-quality video, but are not as accepting of low-quality sound. If it is hard to hear the person speaking, or there is a lot of background noise com-peting with the dialogue, people are going to stop watching. And it really is incredible how much background noise there is that we just automatically filter out, yet comes through loud and clear when you are recording. Air con-ditioners, a refrigerator clicking on and off, traffic noise coming in a window, it really is amazing how much there is when you start paying attention to it.
LightingLighting is a skill in and of itself, and we were able to borrow a lighting kit from the university. The building that we were working in provided us with a number of different possibilities and angles to work from and I’ll admit, this was a bit of a learning experience with the light, and I was glad to have the help in figuring out some of the solutions. Since this project I have picked up three Fotodiox Flapjack lights that are a lightweight (easy to travel with), compact lighting solution.
TeleprompterThe students were great to work with and did the best they could to learn their lines in advance. However, as a backup, we used an iPhone as a tele-prompter, which is an ideal, low-cost solution. There is a free app (heck, there is an app for everything these days) called “PromptWare Plus” that works as a teleprompter. We mounted it right next to the camera lens using an iPhone tripod mount and a Gorillapod, and the benefit of using an iPhone, versus something larger such as an iPad, is that the person’s eyes are not moving back and forth, reading the text as it moves up the screen.
Memory and storageAll of the video is stored on a memory card in the camera. The T5i has the ability to connect to a laptop computer, which serves two purposes. The computer screen can be used as an external monitor for the camera, which helps a lot in helping to compose the shot on a larger screen rather than the small one on the camera. In addition, the file can be downloaded to the computer, providing an immediate backup to the on-camera copy. In addition, each evening, the files were also copied to an external hard drive, which was kept in a separate location from the camera and laptop, just in the event that something should happen to them. The sound files from the H1 recorder are also downloaded into the computer and then copied onto the external hard drive, creating redundant copies.
PostproductionGetting the footage is obviously a major step, but then editing it in “post” is another major undertaking. For this project, we were fortunate to have someone that works for a television news station take that on for us, and he did an excellent job using professional-level editing software and equip-ment.
For other projects we’re using Adobe Premiere Elements video editing software on a Mac, which is the “light” version of their full editing program Adobe Premiere Pro, and it definitely meets our needs. One drawback to this program is the onboard tutorial and help, which never seems to have the answers to my questions. However, there is always Google, which does have the answer, every time, and more so!
Hosting the videoThere are two very popular solutions out there for hosting the videos online, one is YouTube and the other is Vimeo. I’ll admit, I don’t know much about Vimeo and have been gravitating towards YouTube. First, it is free (can’t beat that), and it provides a wealth of options for streaming and embed-ding. In addition, it provides a lot of metrics about who is watching it, when, how long they are watching it and much more. Knowing how long people are watching a video (engagement) is very useful because you can find out when people are leaving your video, telling you at what point you lost your audiences attention. This is helpful in analyzing your video.
Telling a storyOne thing that I am learning more about is that knowing how to work the equipment is one thing, but creating an engaging story is another. You can have the best footage in the world, but if you aren’t telling a story that will engage your viewer (even in 30 seconds), then what you are creating won’t have the impact that you are looking for. This is a skill that takes time and effort to develop and requires just as much an “eye” as does composing the shot, for example.
Doing your own video production now is easier than it ever has been, and it definitely does not have to involve all of the equipment I have covered. Telling the story is probably the most important part of any project, and this can be done with something as simple as an iPhone (which does have an awesome camera in it). Yes, a DSLR can help you get more depth of field, better white balance and color, using an external microphone helps with the audio quality, but it really all comes back to the story you want to tell. Think about some of the great movies you have seen, such as a Pixar movie, for example. They always have world-class animation that is just amazing, but if the story they are telling does grab you, that can make all the difference in the world.
And I’m not a storyteller (yet). Working on it!
If you have any questions about what we did, and what I’m learning about the video process, please feel free to drop me a note at [email protected], I’d love to hear from you!
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Resources available at Campus FirewatchCAMPUS FIREWATCH
There are a wealth of resources available, free of charge, on Campus Firewatch at www.campus-firewatch.com under the RESOURCE tab in the navigation bar. These are some of the more popular ones.
9 FiresThis short documentary, co-created by the Minger Foundation and Campus Firewatch, is about the impact of a series of nine fires that happened in three weeks across the country at the beginning of the spring 2012 semester. It will be released on the Internet in September 2012 and will be freely avail-able for schools to use. You can see the trailer for this powerful documentary here.
Fire Safety for Students with DisabilitiesThe Minger Foundation and Campus Firewatch developed a guide and a series of videos to help in teaching fire safety to students with disabilities.
Tip-a-DayA list of “tweetable” tips that you can use in reaching out to students with fire safety information. Enough for a month’s worth of tweets!
Current Information SheetA copy of this is enclosed in this issue and it is updated, online, following each fatal campus-related incident.
Campus-related fire deaths
Information on these tragedies is available in different formats, including a spreadsheet, a compilation and a map (the embed code for the map is provided on the web site if you want to embed it on your own web site). This is the only, and most complete, compilation of these incidents available, anywhere.
Campus FirelogThis is a comprehensive listing of all campus-related incidents, fatal and non-fatal, going back to 2000. Seven megabytes of data, spanning 382 pages of incidents, is available and is the only source of information on inci-dents involving students and campuses.
RA Fire Safety Guide, Videos and PostersA collection of resources, created by Minger Foundation and Campus Firewatch, available for resident assistants to use on their bulletin boards with QR codes that take the viewer to more information and videos.
Peter’s StoryA very powerful video about the life and death of Peter Talen, who died in an off-campus fire at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Questions to AskA series of questions for students and parents to ask when looking a student housing.
Videos of student room mockup burnsSchools across the nation are using mockups to demonstrate how fast a fire spreads and the importance of automatic fire sprinklers through these full-scale demonstration burns. This is a collection of video clips from these burns, posted on YouTube.
Live mockup burn plansThe Home Fire Sprinkler Coalition has put together a packet of instructions on how to build side-by-side mockups of student rooms for demonstration burns.
