Dear TRU Community,

A reminder that the fall Fire Drills will take place on Sept. 27 and 28.

Please try to ensure that you do not schedule exams, important meetings, presentations, events, etc. on these days in order to minimize disruption—however if there is a serious conflict please let me know at sjyrkkanen@tru.ca asap.

A special request to faculty

For the safety of those in your class, please take a couple of minutes at the start of each term to review the following new fire/evacuation safety procedures:

• instruct students as to where the nearest and alternate Assembly Areas and Areas of Refuge are located
• when the alarms sound, take your students as a group to the nearest Assembly Area
• once you arrive at the Assembly Area, please do your best to ensure that everyone is accounted for
• if someone is missing please advise the incident commander (in the bright green vest) or emergency marshal (bright orange vest) immediately

The same procedure will apply to staff as well. I realize that this is a different procedure from the past however we are implementing this accountability practice as part of our Emergency Planning protocols.

Assembly areas

Please take this opportunity to locate the Assembly Area around your building, as well as the nearest and alternate routes of exit from the office/classroom/lab where you work in case your path of exit is blocked.

Areas of refuge

Persons with mobility issues that cannot use the stairs to evacuate the building can go to the nearest Area of Refuge. These are stairwells that are marked with the sign at right, and are engineered for fire resistance. Do not use elevators. Emergency marshals and/or security staff will report your position to the incident commander. In the case of a real emergency, the incident commander will report your position to Fire Department personnel.

Emergency marshals

Please remember you must evacuate your building anytime you hear the alarm bells ringing—you never know when it may be the real thing—and follow the instructions of the volunteer marshals.

We are very short of emergency marshals especially in Old Main and CAC. If you work in these areas please consider volunteering—it doesn’t take much of your time and will help us to ensure that students and co-workers are safely evacuated from the building. If you are interested please contact me.

Thank you for your cooperation,
Stacey

Stacey Jyrkkänen
Associate Director, Office of Safety & Emergency Management
Thompson Rivers University
sjyrkkanen@tru.ca