The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 68

Michael Leytem * Emily Stark

may take cues from these behaviors and also
ignore alarms, delaying evacuation until it may
be too late. When combined with the ﬁnding
that less than half of the participants knew that
ﬁres could become dangerous in less than 3
minutes from the sound of an alarm, the potential for catastrophe becomes greater. This
study is unique in incorporating a scenario of
this type; however, this scenario should be validated in future studies to ensure its effectiveness in capturing students' potential responses
to a ﬁre.

However, when examining

This potential is further heightened if the
failure of some residents to respond to ﬁre
alarms leads others to return to the building
to evacuate them. Aguirre, Torres, Gill, and
Hotchkiss (2011) examined in depth the injury
and fatality patterns resulting from the Station
nightclub ﬁre in 2003 and found evidence that
the extent to which people knew one another
predicted injuries and deaths, suggesting
that people went into dangerous areas of the
nightclub to save others. This tendency could
compound an emergency situation if people
put themselves at risk to save others who are
ignoring alarms. Uncovering the difference
in evacuation behaviors based on the extent to
which people know each other should be explored in future research.

whereas the remainder felt they

Loss of Conﬁdence in the Alarm System
Although it is important for students to learn
evacuation routes through regular ﬁre drills,
this means that much of the time residence
hall inhabitants hear a ﬁre alarm, it is not an
actual ﬁre. This could reinforce the idea that
ﬁre alarms do not signal an emergency and
lead to delays in evacuation. This concern has
also been identiﬁed by ﬁre safety researchers
(Proulx, 2007), who noted that the largest de68

responses to the question of how
many minutes could elapse from
when they hear a ﬁre alarm to when
they are in serious danger, only 45%
of participants responded with the
correct answer (as provided by the
city ﬁre marshal) of 0 to 3 minutes,
had more time before a ﬁre could
become dangerous.

terrent to proper ﬁre alarm response behavior
is credited to the loss of conﬁdence in the ﬁre
alarm system, due both to drills and to nuisance alarms where alarms are triggered when
there is not an emergency. If occupants discount alarms as false, their failure to respond
could put both themselves, and others they inﬂuence, at risk. In 2009 U.S. ﬁre departments
responded to approximately 2.177 million false
alarms, including unintentional activations,
system malfunctions, and malicious or mischievous acts (National Fire Protection Association, 2011). In the current study, nearly 81%
of participants agreed that their ﬁrst reaction to
a ﬁre alarm is to think that it is false, showing
that they do not interpret the alarms as indicating an emergency. False alarms may never
be completely unavoidable, but reducing the
number of false alarms, while maintaining ﬁre

THE JOURNAL OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY STUDENT HOUSING
The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

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