Brady White, Campus Carrier digital media editor
The fire alarms at Morgan Hall should be fixed. To me it seems they have a 50% chance of going off every day, and this must be an issue with the actual alarms. If fires were occurring this frequently, Morgan would not be allowed to house students. On Tuesday from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., it felt like the fire alarms kept turning on and off. Sometimes it was an announcement of the fire, and other times it was accompanied by loud beeping in the dorm rooms.
This may be harmful for the students living in Morgan. These fire alarms are so loud, the sound is painful to my ears. On a chart by the Salem Audiology Clinic, the sources of noise along with their decibels suggest that our fire alarms are likely around from 110 to 120 decibels in the dorm rooms. It makes sense that a fire alarm is loud, however, the fact that they go off so often is making me concerned for my hearing in the future.
On the same Salem Chart, it states that the “permissible exposure time” to these decibels is from 30 seconds to a minute. These fire alarms can go off for an hour. I would not be surprised if the hearing of students living in Morgan deteriorates earlier because of how often we are subjected to this assault on our eardrums.
These broken alarms are also harmful because the students in Morgan do not know when there is an actual fire anymore. The false alarms are so frequent that the urgency from them is removed. They are more often an inconvenience than something keeping us safe. I am also sure I am not the only one that feels this way. It is a reasonable assumption to make that many students have had their feeling of urgency suppressed by the frequency of these false alarms.
Something to consider is emotional support animals (ESA). My roommate has an ESA cat. We are not allowed to bring the cat around campus. We also do not want to because the cat needs to be able to access food and water in our dorm room.
However, the fire alarms are likely taking a toll on the cat’s hearing as well. According to Pangovet.com, anything higher than 95 decibels can be harmful to a cat’s hearing, thus I cannot in good conscience leave my roommate’s cat in our dorm room due to what they may be subjected to throughout the day.
These false alarms have possibly become a hazard for those living in Morgan, and thus should be fixed as soon as possible to reduce potential harm to students and our pets either by hearing damage or in the case of a real fire.