About a year ago, a room in Thurston Hall caught fire, leaving resident Kevin McLaughlin in very bad shape. There is probably not a sophomore, junior, or senior on campus who doesn’t remember this event. I know I remember it clearly, getting an early morning wakeup call and running to the dorm to cover the story.
Thurston room 913 was severely damaged in the fire.
Media Credit: Jeff Baum
In June 2005, The Hatchet reported:
Amid questions about the effectiveness of Thurston’s sprinkler systems and the fact that the fire was first identified by a Secret Service officer outside the building, the University put together a panel to evaluate GW’s fire safety protocols.
‘The University established a working group of administrators from a broad range of area responsibilities to review the incident and the University’s response,’ said Matt Nehmer, assistant director of media relations. ‘We expect the working group to complete its review by the end of the summer, and any necessary changes identified as a result of that review will be implemented.’
The group has representatives from the general counsel’s office, Student and Academic Support Services and Executive Vice President and Treasurer Louis Katz’s office, among others.
When the fire broke out, it did not spread to other rooms due to sprinklers that discharged in the hallways of the dorm, but Thurston Hall is an old dorm and does not have sprinklers inside rooms to extinguish fires. Kevin’s father Timothy told The Hatchet last year, “If there had been a sprinkler system in Kevin’s room, I think he would be in a lot better condition than he is in now.” Katz pointed to two changes the University made to promote fire safety: banning smoking in dorms — though the fire was determined to have been cause by a portable grill — and initiating health and safety inspections, which calls for the confiscation of such grills.
In Summer 2005, GW updated its sprinkler system in the West End, Dakota will get a new sprinkler system this summer, and Katz said, “over the next four years, a number of projects will be undertaken to upgrade fire and life safety systems in residence halls.” But he also told The Hatchet that Thurston Hall today is “equally as safe” as it was in March 22, 2005 when the fire scorched room 913.
Read Andrew Breza’s full story here.
This comment isn’t related to the safety of Thurston, but to the op-ed by Paul Kendrick. What a load of utter poppycock!
News flash: If you’re going into the Capitol or one of the House or Senate office buildings, and you go around the metal detector and ignore several commands by the Capitol Police to stop, you deserve a whooping. It doesn’t matter if you’re Congresswoman McKinney or Joe Q. Public.
The police officer was doing his job: making sure the Capitol complex was safe. Congresswoman McKinney admits she was not wearing her required pin and that her expectation is that the police officers recognize the faces of each and every member of Congress. All 535 of them. Perhaps her expectations are a bit unreal.
Kendrick’s piece is simply silly. Instead of closing our eyes and pondering what two people are thinking and feeling, how about we open our eyes and take a look at reality.
That reality is that a Capitol police officer – tasked with ensuring the safety of the Capitol, its employees and visitors – saw a woman go around a metal detector. He did not recognize her.
He called for her to stop.
She kept walking.
He called for her to stop again.
She kept walking.
He called for her to stop for the third time.
She kept walking.
He caught up with her and grabbed her by the arm. She turned and hit him with her cell phone.
Perhaps the best solution is not the police officer and the Congresswoman sitting around, talking about their feelings, and then hugging it out at the end.
Perhaps the best solution is for members of Congress to make sure they wear their pins when they are entering the Capitol and if they are asked to stop by the Capitol Police, then they should stop and identify themselves.
No need for closing our eyes and imagining the thought processes of either party. Just the need to use simple, basic common sense.
Sprinklers are installed to stop the spread of fire, they are not designed to extinguish a fire completely. The larger story that needs to be investigated is why did the fire control and annunciation system fail to inform the central station monitor or the fire control panel in the building of the smoke alarm activation and hallway sprinkler activation. Why did a bystander report the fire and not the fire control system? Are the smoke detectors not linked to the central station monitor? How old or advanced is the system and what are its capabilities?
In today’s Hatchet it was reported that students questioned whether the University would even be able to get its 20-year Campus Plan approved by the city, since local resident groups are vehemently opposed to it. Katz replied “there is a quiet majority of residents who support GW, and that a louder but smaller group opposes its plans.” Does he have facts and figures to back up this statement?
“There’s a very vocal group in Foggy Bottom that is definitely against this. They’re against the Kennedy Center, the Red Cross, everything,” Katz said. That comment is almost as corny as SJT’s retirement statement, “It’s the American thing to do”.
More facts, figures, numbers, and statistics, please, and not more of the same glib rhetoric, is needed from GWU University officials.
Also in today’s Hatchet was an editorial dealing with the Foggy Bottom Association. The gist of the editorial is that the FBA shouldn’t waste its time and money on lawsuits because GW will eventually win. The FBA and FoBo residents are urged by the Hatchet to just deal with the fact that the University will keep increasing its size and expanding its holdings. Those same arguments have been being made by the Hatchet for the past decade at least. And year after year, GW keeps adding more students and expanding into areas of Foggy Bottom that it had originally promised to stay clear of.
I think the Hatchet’s attitude can be fairly summed up as “Hatchet to FoBo Residents: Drop Dead!”