{"id":8191,"date":"2011-02-14T15:07:13","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T20:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=8191"},"modified":"2011-02-14T15:09:14","modified_gmt":"2011-02-14T20:09:14","slug":"professor-got-first-hand-look-at-electrical-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2011\/02\/professor-got-first-hand-look-at-electrical-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor got first-hand look at electrical fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Prof.

Prof. Kimberly Cote sits in the sleep lab amidst by towels and blankets that were laundered after a recent electrical fire.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s not a day that Kimberly Cote is likely to forget any time soon \u2013 the day she was working in her sleep lab and an electrical fire erupted outside.<\/p>\n

Cote, an associate professor of Psychology<\/a>, was working in the sleep research laboratory<\/a> on the fourth floor of Mackenzie Chown B block on Jan. 31. It was early afternoon when she and the five students in the lab with her felt the ground shake and watched the lights flicker.<\/p>\n

In that moment, Cote\u2019s couldn\u2019t have known the reality \u2013 that a fire had started in a nearby electrical room, a fire that would close some fourth-floor portions of Mackenzie Chown B and C block for the next week. At first, she thought something had fallen on the roof.<\/p>\n

She opened the door and headed for a fellow faculty member\u2019s office so they could both take a look around. On the way, she felt what seemed like a second explosion. Smoke and flames seemed to billow from the elevator area.<\/p>\n

Heading back through thick smoke, Cote yelled to the students in the lab to evacuate and led them down the stairs to safety.<\/p>\n

\u201cI must have shouted in a convincing way because the students shot out of the lab without their coats or their cell phones,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n

Under the blare of the fire alarm, Cote passed the Psychology department on the third level, threw open the door and yelled, \u201cThis is a real fire. Get out.\u201d Once outside, she borrowed someone\u2019s cell phone to call Campus Security and described exactly where the fire was.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t feel fear, just a sense of urgency to get everyone out,\u201d she said. \u201cThis was a good lesson for the students to have \u2014 that when you hear an alarm, it doesn\u2019t matter if you have to stop what you\u2019re doing, get out of the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s advice echoed by Val Wolfe, Brock’s manager of Environment, Health and Safety. When an alarm sounds in Mackenzie Chown, leave the building and don\u2019t re-enter until the all clear has been given, even if the alarm has stopped.<\/p>\n

Recovery costs from the fire are approaching $60,000. It started in an electrical room known as B411M, which is located near the B block elevator. The likely cause was an overheating electrical switch for an air-handling unit, Wolfe said.<\/p>\n

The fire caused smoke damage in the electrical room and smoke residue in the sleep lab and the fourth-floor B block atrium, she said. The electrical room has been rebuilt and the smoke-contaminated insulation removed, and the area has been thoroughly cleaned. The furniture in the sleep lab was treated off site with an ozonator, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacilities Management<\/a> did a lot of work on getting the power back as quickly as possible,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re thankful we were able to resolve it in a week.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fire caused a dusting of soot in the sleep lab, where experiments must be conducted in identical conditions. Subjects spend the night sleeping there, and students spend long hours working in the lab. For that reason, the lab only reopened Feb. 10 to make extra sure it was clean, Cote said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amid thick smoke, Kimberly Cote evacuated her students and warned her department during a recent electrical fire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8190,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,1],"tags":[53,29,31],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8191"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8193,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191\/revisions\/8193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}