On March 25, the Aspen Apartments had to be evacuated due to a gas leak. Some of the details of exactly what happened are unclear but that’s not important to the story. What is important is the fact that the alarm system in that building is not loud enough to be effective.

The Aspen Apartments (and the sister building, Hilltop) are set up as three subunits, each with three floors and a basement that connects all three. There is one hallway alarm box per subunit or three per section, and only nine in the entire building if the basement is not included.

This means that at night, the alarm is behind two heavy doors – the bedroom door and the door to the apartment. In addition to the doors, a resident is a good 25 feet from the nearest alarm. The sound of the alarm going off is roughly equivalent to a pager going off (I know, I know. Just think back to 1998 if you can and try, try to remember the pager).

Add music or earphones, or maybe even earplugs, if your roommate snores, to the mix and you’re not likely to hear the alarm going off. It’s certainly not loud enough to wake you from a deep sleep.

This is something I have mentioned before. Prior to the evacuation, I had only heard the alarms in that building go off once. I noticed the low volume but thought little of it until I got an e-mail mentioning the fact that residents were not evacuating the apartments during fire drills.

I mentioned that I had not heard the alarms and voiced my concern. I was told by Katherine Nehring, the apartment’s coordinator, “It is a good things your alarms are not going off. It means your building passed inspection,” and, “I apologize if the e-mail made you feel unsafe.”

Then the March 25 evacuation took place. Several students were still in the building when the Denver Fire Department arrived and began searching rooms one by one for the gas leak and students. I voiced this concern to one of the firefighters, and, bless him, he did mention it to Campus Safety when the two students in whose apartment the leak was found were still asleep.

The following day the e-mail was sent, again by Ms. Nehring:

“Thank you for expressing your concern regarding the fire alarms in your building. Please understand that if the fire alarms in the building did not meet fire code we would not be able to have anyone living in the buildings. Environmental Health and Safety will be coming into the buildings in the near future to run checks on the fire alarm volume.”

So, if they are working on it, what is my point in writing? First, to try in some way to absolve the students who did not evacuate. They are not fools or daredevils. They are simply the victims of the situation. And secondly, creating this entry into the public record may help ensure that this issue does not simply fade into the distance.