Last night the AC in our library caught fire and spewed soot all over the whole libraray. Having a library in a school is a new concept in the UAE. There are no public libraries, and parents don't seem to read a great deal to their children. ADEC are attempting to build up a library and a library culture in the schools. Luckily for us at the girls school the library room is being extended and building was due to start on Sunday, so the staff had moved lots of the furniture and some of the book resources out into my ICT labs next door. The teachers frequently leave the AC's on in the classrooms at the end of the day when they leave, except ICT of course, my teachers are quite vigilant. Last night the AC caught fire and destroyed lots of the book resources and some of the furniture. This has been an eye opening experience.
1. The fire sensors don't work and therefore don't trigger the fire bells
2. Don't leave any AC's on to run continuously
3. There is NO insurance in the school
4. The health and safety people had been at school about a month ago checking on everything like sensors, bells etc. We have had one fire drill in my time
5. How rigorous were the checks?
6. We have a man who continually comes around and checks the AC's
6. The AC was about 10 years old...... What about the rest?
Building is now delayed until after the health and safety inquiry which has already started. Luckily the buildings are concrete and lots of the paper resources had been shifted other wise maybe more than the library would have gone up. The cleaners who lives on the premises, woke up to the smell some 500 m away, across 2 campuses.
3 comments:
Same sort of things happen here too.
The checkers had come through the week before to check fire safety.
Week later a kid threw up outside on the concrete. I used the school fire hose to clean it away. No water came out- the tap had corroded.
The checker said his job was only to check that we had a hose- not to check that any water would actually come out of it.
Total fail!
Must have been a bit close for comfort with your ICT lab next door. With the cost of power over here no one would be leaving any AC on in an empty building.
You are right Moturoa. Incredible that the system only has to look OK!!!Maybe burglar alarms only need to look like ones - with a sticker on the window. I bet the school that you are in do a survey.
Jocelyn - glad it didn't fire up the ICT lab!
Post a Comment