Residence hall students will be faced with a blast of cold air as fire drills help get them ready for a new semester. Officials said they hope students will take fire safety seriously.

Each year, students living in the dorms participate in fire drills, whether they are coordinated by the Department of Residence or by pranksters

“People triggering alarms is really a concern to us because they are vandalizing life safety equipment and devices,” said ISU Safety Coordinator David Bunker.

There is no requirement for the number of fire drills the university must perform, Bunker said. However, the DOR holds two fire drills a year, one each semester, for each building.

“We have a fire drill every semester within the first three weeks of the start of the semester,” Bunker said.

Sally Deters, coordinator of residence life, said the fire drills are not timed to see how long it takes the students to get out of the building.

“Our primary concern is that students know the routes, not how fast they can get out,” Deters said.

There are safety guidelines and procedures the DOR tries to publicize for students during evacuations, such as not using the elevators.

“We do ask the [resident assistants] to do a quick visual check of their floors to see that everyone has been evacuated,” Bunker said. “We want to make sure that everyone gets out during a fire drill.”

Addressing the importance of fire safety to students living in the dorms is also a concern of the Ames fire department.

Russ Jones, an Ames firefighter at Station 1, 1300 Burnett Ave., said a problem the fire department wants to address is students staying in their beds when fire alarms are pulled.

“When someone ‘cries wolf’, what happens is kids will stay in bed,” Jones said. “They are gambling with their lives.”

There are schools that have lost students in fires in residence halls, but there have been no such incidents at Iowa State.

“We have never had a death in the residence halls here contributing from fire,” Bunker said.

The DOR has been working hard to maintain fire safety standards for the dorms, he said. “All of our fire extinguishers are placed in the buildings according to federal regulations,” Bunker said.

To comply with federal regulations, fire extinguishers should be positioned so a person does not have to go farther than 75 feet to reach one.

“We have seen a real dramatic decrease in citations between June 2000 and May 2002,” Bunker said. These citations are given by the fire marshal, who comes and does an inspection every other year.

Bunker said the citations range from a door wedge to a building not being fully sprinkled.