Electrical fault in server room (speculation) sets school ablaze

[pete]

Cherry Willingham School in Lincoln

Students fear GSCE work may be lost as blaze rips through school
BBC News - Cherry Willingham school to reopen after major fire

Headteacher Ed Fitzpatrick said it could be some time before all pupils were allowed to return to the school.

He said: My suspicion is that it's been caused by some kind of electrical fault in the server room or on one of the computers. There's no thought in our minds that it's foul play"

[Edu-IT]

Ouch! Looks pretty bad.

[alan-d]

I wonder, if we look through the records, how many school fires happen at this time of year compared to the rest of the year?

[creese]

"Head teacher Edward Fitzpatrick said: "The alarms went off... a number of school staff were still on the site at that time so we evacuated the building."

Well thats a novel idea.

[broc]

"Head teacher Edward Fitzpatrick said: "The alarms went off... a number of school staff were still on the site at that time so we evacuated the building."

Well thats a novel idea.

Better than evacuating the people.... could have been messy

[azrael78]

Better than evacuating the people.... could have been messy

I'd imagine they did that without prompting...

Az

[Rydra]

You'd be amazed at what people would do.

I had the firebell go off once, and a child refused to leave a classroom, where he'd been left on his own ( ! ), because "The teacher said they could be there."

There was an interesting debate afterwards, of wheither you would be allowed to physically extracate the idiot, or wheither you should leave them there, and just report it to the fire crews/register-taker at the time.
It's the good ol' problem if your conciously leaving someone to (possibly) die, or getting sued for god knows how many violations for saving their life!

[creese]

You'd be amazed at what people would do.

I had the firebell go off once, and a child refused to leave a classroom, where he'd been left on his own ( ! ), because "The teacher said they could be there."

There was an interesting debate afterwards, of wheither you would be allowed to physically extracate the idiot, or wheither you should leave them there, and just report it to the fire crews/register-taker at the time.
It's the good ol' problem if your conciously leaving someone to (possibly) die, or getting sued for god knows how many violations for saving their life!

One of the first things I was taught as a medic was to look after yourself first. Walk to an incident and ensure you are safe and fit enough to deal with casualties. Running would make you more prone to falling and you would be out of breath if you had to anminister mouth to mouth etc.

The same would be for a fire. Leave them there as forcing of carrying them could hinder your escape. Leave it to the pofessionals to deal with. This was also military, so tehre were dangers of secondary devices and snipers to concider.

Anyway, of course that was theory, luckily I never had many serious cases to test the theory. In a real fire who knows what you would do.

[webman]

In that situation, there has to be a balance of interests between you as an employee and you as being a member of staff having a duty of care towards said child. Personally I would persuade the student to move at first, and if they refused I would stay with them and contact a member of SLT over the radio to assist.

[pete]

"You may wish to be burned alive, but we'll never get the smell out of the curtains, so you WILL make your way to $fire_evacuation_point right now. If you don't and you're not immolated, you will spend the rest of your lunchtimes this term cleaning gunk from computer mice."