Alarm response to be tightened up

BURBANK — Emergency evacuation procedures at John Burroughs High School and throughout the Burbank Unified School District will be tightened after an electrical fire on Monday prompted concerns about students' and administrators' responses to campus fire alarms.

School district and Burbank Fire Department officials met Wednesday, in part to discuss reports that Burroughs administrators had announced that Monday's fire alarm was false and kept students inside for about 15 minutes before initiating a school-wide evacuation.

A blaze broke out in an electric vault in the basement of the Burroughs auditorium, billowing thick clouds of black smoke that took fire crews hours to disperse. The fire department is still investigating the cause of the fire.

Emergency procedures dictate that only the Fire Department can call off an alarm.

At the meeting, school district officials were receptive to the Fire Department's input and decided that school policies needed to be fine-tuned, Burbank Fire Department Chief Tracy Pansini said.

Over time, it is easy for people to neglect routine emergency procedures in the event of an alarm — especially when about 90% of triggered alarms turn out to be false, he added.

"Human nature is that you become desensitized, especially when you look out and don't see smoke and fire from the area where the alarm came from," he said. "They recognized that they can't be desensitized and that their policies need to be modified."

Despite the attention drawn to school evacuation procedures,no one was harmed, he said.

In the wake of the incident, the district will strictly adhere to evacuation requirements, Supt. Greg Bowman said.

"It's just a matter of reviewing good practice and good procedure and evacuating any time that the alarms go off," he said

Costs related to the fire exceed $500,000, he said. The district is currently working with its insurance carrier to remedy smoke damage to surfaces and lower-level classrooms, as well as clean things like drama costumes, band uniforms and instruments, which were stored in space beneath the auditorium, he said. Band instruments were scheduled to be cleaned and ready for use by Friday afternoon, he added.

The district hopes to complete the cleaning of the auditorium by June 2.