Steven Cunningham from Stafford County (VA) Quint 12 sent in these photos of something they found during a recent walk though of an elementary school. They saw a storage room that also had a sign for the sprinkler room, so obviously they wanted to check it out. When they opened the door, they were quite surprised at what they found.
Not only that the room was much larger then was expected, but more importantly, that the storage room had been converted into a small classroom. The sprinkler room is actually one room off of the former storage room (the door can be seen in the left side of the photo above.) Things like this could be happening more often due to the combination of school overcrowding and budget cuts. So they most important question is: would you have checked this room on a primary? What about the secondary? What if it didn’t have the sprinkler sign? It is also worth pointing out that this room has no windows or secondary means of egress.
We will never know of all of these instances that happen in our response areas, but we can do the best to prepare ourselves for them. We need to get out into our response areas, and walk through buildings on a regular basis, and always expect the unexpected. …We don’t think this is what the teachers had in mind when they said they wanted smaller class sizes.
Absolutely it better be searched on a primary and a secondary! Do we ever not search something due to labeling? I would hope not. Especially in a school where we know kids will crawl into any place they think will provide them safety from something else (fire) that scares them.
On a primary you should open every door if it doesn’t place you in danger. Even if you don’t enter the room opening the door lets you take a quick glance so you would be able to see something like this. I was on a secondary search of a residential fire and I opened a door and found stairs down into a basement. The basement was larger than the living area of the structure and was a HUGE grow operation. The guys on the primary search skipped this door because they ASSUMED it was a closet. Nothing should ever be assumed.