Fire breaks out in Derwent A block
A fire, which broke out in a kitchen in Derwent A Block, was eventually contained by the Yorkshire fire department this afternoon.
The toaster, which started the fire, had first shown signs of being faulty yesterday.
A first year Economics and Politics student explained: “It went bang and stopped working on Sunday and I was going to tell the porters about it but there were no porters.”
The student also attempted to contact Security Services.
When the student attempted to make toast on Monday, the toaster started sparking and set off the fire alarm.
“I came back and it appeared to be fixed but obviously not,” he said as smoke billowed out of the third floor window.
The Yorkshire fire department was called and the fire eventually contained.
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So, this shows that if the portering were still available 24 hours, the fire could have been avoided thus not risking new first years…
If stupid and irresponsible little boys used just one ounce of common sense by …
(a) not using a piece of equipment they know to be faulty,
(b) not leaving something cooking unattended
… then we would all be safer and the costs of calling out the fire department would have been saved!
Perhaps we should go back to the old-fashioned regime where first years have to live in accommodation with meals provided for them!
“A first year Economics and Politics student explained: “It went bang and stopped working on Sunday and I was going to tell the porters about it but there were no porters.”
Sorry, just to emphasise:
“I was going to tell the porters about it but there were no porters.”
Jane Grenville, where are our porters?
Helen, you really don’t know what happend here.
a) That student did not know the toaster may have been faulty
b) It wasn’t left unattended – there were other students there, the ones who set of the fire alarm. It wasn’t a slow process of sparking and bursting into flames believe it or not.
Perhaps if students were legally allowed to use fire-fighting equiptment the bulding wouldn’t have been left to burn before the fire department arrived. Or indeed if the block had CO2 fire extinguishers for electrical fires.
Students followed fire safety procedure exactly, the fault here was with a toasters electrics, please don’t needlessly presume it was the fault of ‘little boys’ with no basis whatsoever.
Dear Helen,
If you read the article above carefully you will note that:
1) He thought the toaster had been fixed.
2) At no point is it said he left the toaster unattended.
And thus your points are invalid.
wow helen do you work for the unviersity? its seems like your trying to use this accident as an reason to force through catered accomodation? isnt that what the uni is currently trying to do? and like the story said if the uni had not cut poetering costs, the toaster would have been fixed!!!!!
this uni needs a reality cheek…. it needs to put students before profit
It wasn’t left unattended, and we weren’t aware it was faulty, we were told it had been mended.
The toaster was unplugged immediately when it started smoking and one person went to tell the porters while another stayed with it. When the smoke turned into flames the fire blanket was put over it, the fire alarm was pressed and the building evacuated. Nothing stupid or irresponsible about it.
I am totally in favour of 24 hour portering, but apparently the porters told the student to bring the toaster downstairs!!
Derwent A-blocker
to Helen
and others, I was not the person who then put toast in the fire or called security… the article is factually inacurate. i did not use the toaster on the monday. and still thought it was broken untill my flat mates told me it worked…
Different students used the toaster on moday and it was fine, up until the last person using it, as they thought it had been fixed. this is because the electricty and toaster was working. when it went bang on the sunday, all the electrical sockets stopped working. on monday, they worked, and thus people thought that the problem had been reported and fixed.
plus, there were 3 people in the kitchen, adhearing to the fire saftey breifings given at the start of our time here, telling us not to leave cooking food unatended. also the toaster actually caught fire when there was no toast in there. it had been taken out before it spontaniously combusted.
We had a toaster in Old Goodricke last year that also sparked towards the end of the year, after it flipped a circuit breaker for the kitchen (and meant we had to power the fridges via an extension lead from the corridor) we stopped using it. I think it’s to do with the mechanism which holds the bread rack down becoming dirty (the fact that people tried to make cheese toasties in it probably didn’t help). It’s a really poor design in my opinion. For the record the ones in New Goodricke are much better.
Personally I’d have unplugged it, run it under the tap if possible, and dropped it out the window (after checking there was noone in the way).
Also CO2 fire extinguishers are very unsafe unless used properly because:
a) Due to the gas rapidly expanding the nozzle can become very cold, and some people have held these.
b) CO2 in an enclosed environment is poisonous.
Once it was unplugged a water one would have been perfectly safe to use.
helen, never let the fact you don’t know the facts of the matter affect whether you post a comment on a story or not. idiot