On Wednesday, April 10th, there was a fire drill in Thormøhlensgate 53A/B. The exercise went very well. I see this as a common success for whole BIO, or at least for all the users of the mentioned buildings. The HSE coordinator, the fire user representatives and Knut Olav have together put a lot of effort into updating and reorganising of the fire safety handbook for the Department of Biological Sciences. The new handbook is available on the Departments website, FIRE SAFETY HANDBOOK FOR DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Apparently, we already have a good tradition for leaving the buildings quickly and effectively (within ca. 5 minutes); earlier feedback and suggestions of improvements concerned the common responsibility for checking the corridors – all of us have it, not only the fire site managers – and the placement upon evacuation – briefly: out of the way for vehicles. We managed all that during this exercise, with no problem at all! 😊
I am very glad that so many people have effectively received this information. It looks like we, as a working community, automatically practice the good habits for evacuation and checking of the corridors. This is great to see. After this fire drill I feel that the everyday effort was really worth it. In my report to Bjarte Thorsen I wrote the following: “Both buildings (A and B) were evacuated within 4 minutes (4’10’’) – this is our record, so far. (…) All the areas have been reported by the local fire site managers; no report was missing. The evacuated persons went directly to the assembly point and gathered close to the propeller, keeping the road free for driving through. I consider that this fire safety exercise went very well.”
Thank you for this time!
Elzbieta Petelenz