Fire Drills

Seton Hall University officials maintained yesterday that a series of emergency evacuations at the dormitory where a fire killed three freshmen Wednesday was the equivalent of legally required fire drills. The assertion came a day after school officials said they had not conducted any fire drills this school year at Boland Hall and could not recall whether any had ever been held at the dorm. In an apparent attempt to deflect parent criticism about the absence of a sprinkler system in Boland Hall, school officials commissioned and released a poll of colleges and universities around the nation indicating that many have older dorms without sprinklers.

Barkan's Tutoring & Testing Service, tucked into the back end of the Red Barn Mall, is nearly invisible. But local parents know about it. For 16 years, they have enrolled their children for one-on-one tutoring to help them over hurdles in algebra, reading and other subjects. In April, a state regulator drove through Hatboro, found Barkan's and told its director that the tutoring center was subject to a flurry of state private-school regulations. Dave Reckless, Barkan's director, laughed at a few of them.

Seton Hall University officials yesterday said they had not conducted any fire drills this school year in the freshman dormitory where three students died in a fire, raising the possibility of a violation of the state fire code. New Jersey's uniform fire code requires "at least two" fire drills every year in dormitories of four stories or more, and records must be kept in case local fire officials request them. University officials could not say if a fire drill had ever been held at Boland Hall, site of Wednesday's fierce blaze, which sent nearly 60 students to the hospital.

Ordered into port in Eddystone Borough for a long layover, Capt. Richard Johnston of the Louisiana, a liquid natural-gas carrier ship, realized he had an unusually large surplus of food. His proposed solution: Give the food to the United Way for distribution in area food banks. Johnston's generosity a year ago this month earned him recognition and thanks during Monday's Borough Council meeting. "They proved that you don't have to live next door to be a good neighbor," said Mary Howatt, the borough secretary.

Thank you for your story on the decrepit schools in Philadelphia and your focus on Joshua Kulda, an admirable 10-year- old child with cerebral palsy (Dec. 19). As the owner of a business focused on accessible solutions and the father of a 7 year-old child with cerebral palsy, I was appalled and saddened by what Joshua must endure each day, including being fearful of being left behind during fire drills. I also was impressed with Joshua's mother and her personal dedication to improving her son's school.

Fire Chief Allicia Screven is ablaze with pride. She just won top patrol in the city. Allicia, 11, is the leader of the Junior Fire Patrol at the Joseph H. Brown Elementary School at Frankford Avenue and Stanwood Street. Last Thursday, about 30 Brown students won a plaque and Allicia got a trophy declaring the patrol the best in the city. Fourteen other schools also received citations at a luncheon sponsored by the Philadelphia Fire Department and Sears, Roebuck & Co. The function also celebrated the Junior Fire Department's 30th anniversary.

The fast-moving fire that swept through a care home, killing nine residents and turning the heart of this resort town to anguish, may have been caused by careless smoking, officials said yesterday. And some here raised a grim possibility: that residents may have initially ignored the fire alarms sounding in the home because of repeated false alarms in the past. State police Capt. Frank Panuccio said a preliminary investigation showed the fire at Country Manor Personal Care Home, which houses elderly and mentally retarded adults, appeared to have started in the enclosed front porch.

Fires caused about $342,000 in property losses in Lower Merion last year, the lowest figure in the 20 years that such records have been kept, township fire officials have reported. Township officials have said 1990 was a banner year for the volunteer fire companies, with the number of fire calls down by 9 percent and the number of building blazes down by 5 percent. "We think that our fire prevention program has a lot to do with it," Fire Chief Harry Knorr said this week. But "we're not discounting the fact that we were very fortunate.

As a 5-year-old in Beijing, Catherine Wang spent much of her free time drawing pictures, scribbling on any handy piece of paper. Her grandmother, Louise Wang, never thought too much about it. "She seemed to be teaching herself how to draw," Louise Wang said. Indeed she did. In June, Wang, now 18 and a junior at Cherry Hill High School East, bested 3,000 student competitors to win the statewide poster contest sponsored by the New Jersey Fire Prevention and Protection Association and the New Jersey State Bureau of Fire Prevention.

When dormitory fire alarms blared at 4:30 Wednesday morning, a good number of Seton Hall freshmen covered their heads with pillows and rolled over. Others hid in closets or showers hoping to evade resident assistants who would make them evacuate into the bitter cold. Only frantic knocks and cries that "It's real; it's real; it's real" got them moving. Sadly, three students didn't get out; they died of burns and smoke inhalation. More than 60 students were injured, six critically.

MINERAL, Va. - When the "Big One" rocked the East Coast one year ago, the earthquake centered on this rural Virginia town cracked ceiling tiles and damaged two local school buildings so badly that they had to be shuttered for good. As the academic year gets under way, students are reciting a new safety mantra: Drop, cover, and hold on. Earthquake drills are now as ubiquitous as fire drills at Louisa County schools in central Virginia, where 4,600 students were attending classes when the 5.8-magnitude quake struck nearby on Aug. 23, 2011.

'No one remembers anything in America," Frank Rich began one of his last columns. He was writing about the Great Government Shutdown of 1995, already largely unremembered and widely assumed to be non-analogous to anything. This column is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire; 100 years ago on March 25, it killed 146 garment workers in New York in a matter of minutes. With its rows of tucks, ruching, embroidery, and lace insertions, the shirtwaist - we'd call it a blouse now - looks delicate, feminine, sweetly old-fashioned.

Thank you for your story on the decrepit schools in Philadelphia and your focus on Joshua Kulda, an admirable 10-year- old child with cerebral palsy (Dec. 19). As the owner of a business focused on accessible solutions and the father of a 7 year-old child with cerebral palsy, I was appalled and saddened by what Joshua must endure each day, including being fearful of being left behind during fire drills. I also was impressed with Joshua's mother and her personal dedication to improving her son's school.

When Mary Jean Tippett walks down the aisle on Saturday, she'll have waited 50 years to say "I do. " Her sweetheart, Jimmy Little, proposed in 1955 when they were both 17-year-olds enrolled at what was then called the Widener School for Crippled Children in Olney. But her mother would not allow the couple to get married, and Mary understood. "My mother," she says, "was protecting me. " Her mother's concerns were hardly unusual at the time. Mary was physically and mentally handicapped, the result of a fever in childhood that cut off blood flow to her brain; Jimmy was born with cerebral palsy.

Staff deserve praise for child-care center rescue Kudos to the director and staff of the Alphabet Academy Child Care Center, who safely removed 59 children to a secure location in a matter of minutes during the fire that destroyed their building ("Arson is suspected in blaze at day-care center building," Feb. 8). Their actions were reminiscent of the bravery of the staff of the child-care centers at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, whose charges were not, thankfully, among the casualties of those disasters.

A fight involving more than a dozen Camden High School students broke out during a fire drill yesterday afternoon, ending with three students' being taken to the hospital and three facing assault charges, police said. The fight started after a boy pushed a girl during a 2:15 p.m. fire drill, said Camden Police Lt. Harry Leone. He said eight to 15 students eventually became involved, many of them throwing chairs and staplers. One girl threw a bottle, hitting another student.

State officials have conceded that during a surprise fire drill last week, Bancroft NeuroHealth employees evacuated residents at two group homes in Haddonfield in under the three minutes required by law. The Department of Human Services, which conducted the June 11 drill, had maintained it took 10 minutes to complete the evacuation of the buildings, which house 20 mentally disabled children placed by the state. Confusion over how long the exercise took stems from when the clock started ticking.

State officials have halted placement of mentally disabled children at prestigious Bancroft NeuroHealth of Haddonfield after staff failed to evacuate buildings promptly during a surprise fire drill Tuesday. Officials of the Department of Human Services say inadequate staffing at the Lindens, a neuro-behavioral unit, and the youth and pediatric campus led to the evacuation taking 10 minutes instead of the three required by law. The two facilities at the 119-year-old institution serve about 60 mentally disabled children.

In the event of a bioterrorist attack using a deadly and contagious disease such as smallpox, public-health officials want to be able to close roads and airports, herd people into stadiums, and, if necessary, quarantine entire infected cities. To make that possible, 50 governors this week will receive copies of a proposed law, drafted at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, that could give states immense power to control their populations. The proposed "model state emergency health powers act" may be months or years from enactment by state legislatures.

Jonathon Shepsko was stretched out on a narrow bed in the back room of what appeared to be a construction trailer when smoke started pouring from a small vent high on an interior wall. Without sitting up, he quickly rolled out of bed, crawled to the closed door, found it was hot, and then left the smoke-filled room by the back entrance. The exercise took just seconds. The setting was fake, but the message was real: Standing up in a smoke-filled room can lead to death. It is one of many survival tips northern Chester County firefighters will offer on Saturday when they unveil the Family Safety Fire House, which takes fire drills to a new level.