I am always saddened to read the news of young children dying in house fires. But campus fires, can clearly be avoided through the proper education and fire safe practices. Here is yet another tragic story:
Graduate student killed in off-campus fire in Wheaton, Illinois
BELCHERTOWN, Mass., January 20, 2010 —Mark Groesch, 28, a graduate student attending Wheaton College, was killed in an off-campus apartment fire on Saturday in Wheaton, Illinois. According to Wheaton Fire Department Deputy Chief Bill Schultz, the call to 911 came in at approximately 1:10 a.m. from one of the other occupants in the building. Upon arrival, fire crews found smoke coming from the lower level apartment and entered it to fight the fire and found the victim in one of the bedrooms. He was the only occupant in the unit. The investigation is ongoing and the cause of the fire has not been determined at this time.
The fire occurred in a lower-level apartment in a three-story wood-frame building. The building was equipped with a building fire alarm system with smoke detectors in the common areas and single-station smoke alarms in the individual apartments. The building did not have an automatic fire sprinkler system.
Please join me in the crusade to end campus fires both on and off-campus. Visit our website for updated and valuable information on the NIFAST campus programs. We are aggressively pursuing opportunities with many campus communities in and around your cities. If this of interest to you, pass along our NIFAST information to your college executives and ask that they contact us to discuss campus programming options around fire safety.
We must prevent this tragic loss of life!
Steve Smith – President of NIFAST
NIFAST is a national company comprised of certified fire safety professionals, founded and operated by fire safety industry leaders.
