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Daily Bulletin
University of Waterloo -- Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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Thursday, October 10, 1996
If this fire burns out
Beth Weckman knows fire. She's traced its
movements, timed its speed, observed its feeding habits. She's
taken its temperature countless times. But her first time inside a
burning building was an eye-opener, despite the fact that she
couldn't see a thing.
"The turnout gear is stiff and the breathing apparatus is heavy,"
she says. "It's hard to move. You lose all your senses: your hearing
is muffled, and your vision is gone because of the smoke."
Weckman, of UW's mechanical engineering department, is a member of the
fire
research group in the engineering faculty, a role in which she's
helped to burn down six houses under controlled conditions. She
and her colleagues will be out today
at the Student Life Centre
to demonstrate and talk about their work.
The occasion: Fire Prevention Week.
"The
theme of the week," says UW safety director Kevin Stewart, is 'Let's
hear it for fire safety -- test your detectors'." So besides
the fire research demonstrations, there will be other things to
see and do from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the SLC and in the
Physical Activities quadrangle. You can check out a fire truck, meet a
firefighter, get the word on smoke detectors, and (at 12:15 and
1:15) see demonstrations of the Waterloo Fire Department's new
defibrillation equipment.
Oh, and about smoke detectors -- here's advice from the
Fire Department of New
York:
These lifesaving devices require a
little attention to keep 'em
running smoothly and efficiently.
Quite simply, they gotta work.
Install On Each Level. And
outside each sleeping area.
Testing, Testing. Test them
monthly and install new batteries
once a year.
The Ten Year Rule. Replace
smoke detectors over 10 years old.
Meetings and events coming
A brief list:
- The senate long-range planning committee meets at 3:00 (Needles
Hall room 3004) to continue work on UW's submission to the
Ontario
panel on post-secondary education, which will hear from Waterloo at
a hearing next Wednesday.
- Diana Wiwa of Nigeria speaks this evening "about the struggle between
the Ogoni people and Shell Oil, in the context
of general human rights issues". She is the sister of
Ken
Saro-Wiwa, hanged in Nigeria earlier this year. It's been pointed
out to me that yesterday's Gazette said the talk tonight --
Student Life Centre, 7:30 p.m. -- was sponsored by the Federation of
Students, and in fact the co-sponsors are the Waterloo Public Interest
Research Group, Amnesty International, and the Feds.
- Tomorrow morning, Gerald Pattenden of Nottingham University, England,
appears in UW's chemistry department in what's described as the Inaugural
Distinguished Allelix Lectureship Series. He'll speak at 10 a.m.
(Davis Centre room 1302) on synthetic studies of chemicals found in
"natural products of biological significance".
- The drama department's first fall production, "Salt Water Moon",
opens October 16 for a two-week run. There was a noon-hour production
of the same play last spring. It's a sweet, sad, funny romance, set in
Newfoundland in 1926. Performances in the studio theatre in Hagey Hall
start at 8 p.m. October 16-19 and 23-26.
Remember, payroll is moving
Staff of UW's payroll department are finishing their move today
from East Campus Hall to the General Services Complex.
Because of the move, payroll will remain closed today, says
department manager Carol Wooten.
"For emergency situations people can call
either human resources -- ext. 3134, Donna Howe -- or financial services --
ext. 3946, Betty Toews -- and we will be notified."
The talk of the campus
A proposal for UW's computer networks to stop carrying
newsgroups that deliver pictures, sounds and software --
"binaries" -- has gone to the associate provost (information
systems and technology) but hasn't been acted on, says Richard Wells,
who chaired
the
working group that made the recommendation. So it's just coincidence
that the binaries newsgroups have been almost empty for the past few
days. Staff in IST say they don't know the reason: "it's entirely
possible," I was told yesterday, "that something upstream of us has
changed." Somebody's investigating.
Construction work is under way on the ground floor of
the Modern Languages building (signs speak of asbestos removal) and,
spectacularly, at the Psychology-Anthropology-Sociology building,
where a mighty crane removing concrete slabs from the roof has left
huge gouges in the lawn beside the ring road.
There's a new director of the
technology
transfer and licensing office. Gerald Gray has arrived in that
post; he succeeds Ted Cross, who retired this summer.
CAR