Back in December of last year, someone pulled the fire alarm as a joke at the Pi Kappa Phi frathouse of University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Pretty standard, if not harmless, college tomfoolery. But when the Fire Department arrived, they discovered "numerous" violations of fire code, ranging from a lack of exit signage to "improper storage of flammable substances." The Knoxville Fire Department notified the Fire Marshall, and in short order the house was declared unsafe for habitation. The surprised brothers were given two options: evacuating the house while it was brought up to code, or "hiring a competent person to act as a fire watch as repairs were made while being occupied." They opted for evacuation. Whether this spoke to a newfound fear of burning to death or miserliness about paying for the fire watch is not clear. (Evidently, not a single brother in the house qualified as a "competent person.") Anyway, a month later the renovations are complete and the Fire Marshall has cleared the house for habitation, though updates will continue apace after the fraternity has returned to residence.
The Pi Kaps shouldn't feel too embarassed about the decrepitude that forced their eviction, though; two other houses have also been declared unsafe for habitation and remain closed. Sigma Phi Epsilon hopes to reopen Tuesday by coughing up for a fire watch, but Lambda Chi Alpha is still shuttered after inspectors discovered "a motorcycle in the house and cooking on the roof of the building," according to the Knoxville News Sentinel.
All this just goes to underscore the importance of the College Housing and Infrastructure Act (CHIA) long-pending in Congress, which would allow alumni to make tax-deductable donations for safety improvements to frathouses. If active chapters aren't even scraping together the money to hire someone to watch out for fires on pain of eviction, we can figure they aren't exactly on the cutting edge of fire safety.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment