Sensing the burn

Cheney Fire Department and Eastern Washington University officials have collaborated on a solution reducing the frequency of fire alarm calls at two university residence halls while also improving students' safety.

That solution boiled down to something as simple as a $50 switch.

Cheney Battalion Chief Ken Johnson said the department routinely responds to fire alarm calls at the university's eight residence halls, only to find the alarm stemmed from smoke generated by a student misusing one of the microwave units located on each floor. Johnson said this typically happens when a student attempts to microwave a bag of popcorn, for instance, but instead of setting the timer for two minutes, sets it for 20 minutes and then walks off and forgets to check the results.

Johnson said it's likely this happens more frequently when a student is intoxicated, although he said he doesn't have numbers to back that up. The result is usually smoke setting off the fire alarm, evacuating the building and summoning department crews.

Johnson and his staff decided something needed to be done.

"We chose those because those were our highest call volumes," he said of the microwave incidents.

But Johnson also had other reasons, reasons he discovered while working towards an advanced degree at the National Fire Academy. Johnson uncovered statistics while researching a paper on cooking fire prevention, a big problem nationally and in Cheney.

According to a November 2016 report from the National Fire Protection Association, between 2010 – 2014, 46 percent of structural fires in the U.S. were caused by cooking. Cooking equipment was also involved in 480 (19 percent) civilian fire deaths, 5,540 (44 percent) civilian fire injuries and $1.1 billion in direct property damage.

Johnson's research also led to the discovery of a device called a "Safe T Sensor" manufactured by University Logistics. The microwave is plugged into one part of the unit, which is in turn plugged into the electrical wall outlet, while another part containing the sensor is magnetically attached to the microwave near the vents.

When the magnetically-attached sensor picks up smoke from an item overheating in the microwave, it immediately shuts off power to the unit. Johnson purchased a sensor online and played around with the device using the microwave at the department's fire station.

He then approached EWU officials about using the unit. That was a couple years ago, he said.

"We didn't realize Eastern would do anything with it until we noticed about six months ago that we hadn't received a lot of alarm calls at Pearce and Dressler (residence halls)," Johnson said. "We went up there, looked at the microwaves and saw the switches."

Barbara Ratcliff, EWU associate director of housing and residential life for business operations, said they decided to start with a trial of 24 switches, and installed them in Pearce and Dressler in the summer of 2015. After the switches were installed, and floor advisers educated on their use, alarm calls associated with cooking dropped off dramatically.

"We're in the process of purchasing additional switches," she said, noting the university planned to install them on all community microwaves in the other six residence halls, including Brewster Hall downtown.

Ratcliff said the university also overhauled the smoke detection and alarm systems in both Pearce and Dressler. The older systems had a propensity of activating simply by picking up dust.

"That, I think, helped with some of the false calls," Ratcliff added.

Johnson said the switches help eliminate most of the human element surrounding cooking alarm calls. He wants to take that further by implementing more education courses for students about not only the microwave switches, but other elements EWU has installed to prevent cooking fires.

John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].