By Jason Johnston
Emporia Gazette – September 5, 2013
Someone at Heartland Apartments called 911 at 5:52 p.m. Wednesday after discovering smoke in the first floor hallway and hearing a smoke alarm, according to the Emporia Fire Department, which arrived on scene four minutes later.
“We pried the door to make entry (to room 108 at 1325 Merchant St.) and found a pan on the stove with the oven on,” said Battalion Chief Rex Fisher.
The firefighters shut off the oven and took the pan off the stove, Fisher said. No one was in the apartment. The Fire Department cleared the building, which is across the street from Emporia State University, of occupants and removed the smoke.
The Emporia Police Department and ESU campus police rerouted traffic on Merchant between 13th and 15th avenues for about an hour.
Fire Chief Jack Taylor spoke to the Emporia City Commission earlier that afternoon about how September is Campus Fire Safety Month at ESU.
“In 2011, we had a fire in off-campus housing that claimed the lives of two of our international students (Zheng Lin and Yawei Fan) at Emporia State University, and following that incident the Emporia Fire Department and Emporia State University entered into a cooperative group that works together to try to increase the life safety and fire safety among our students at Emporia State,” Taylor said.
Carrie Boettcher and Thomas Peterson represented ESU at the commission meeting.
“We really appreciate the partnership between the Emporia Fire Department and the university,” Boettcher said. “We are hoping to continue to develop that and do more things in the future.”
Taylor told the commission about August fire safety events.
Fire Marshal Reason Bradford and Lawana Williams, the department’s administrative assistant, who were both at the meeting, gave out fire safety materials to the students at the ESU campus safety fair Aug. 14.
The Fire Department burned a trailer, which was a two-room fire simulator at the ESU block party Aug. 19. One room had a sprinkler system
The other room that did not have a sprinkler took about 1 minute, 45 seconds to go into complete flashover where that would not be survivable, Taylor said.
“When you are talking about a four-minute response from the time we get the call, you can have a really significant event going on before we even have the chance to arrive there,” he said.
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