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Related Story ALL Fire Pulls Deactivated @ South

October 4, 2002 Early this school year, a number of our staff members noticed that this year, South High School in Minneapolis had removed some fire drill pulls. They didn't think too much of it, until one of them walked the halls of the third floor and discovered that there were no fire drill pulls on the entire third floor! This was especially disconcerting considering the fact that the third floor houses the Physical Science, Chemistry and Physics labs--nearly the entire science department! (The Biology classes, located on the first floor, being the only exception) So what we have here is a reduction in safety infrastructure in an area of the building that is perhaps in need of it most!

Fire Extinguisher Hide-and-Seek

As if this wasn't bad enough, as the school year progressed, our reporters have noticed that some of the fire extinguishers on the third floor had been removed. At last count, of the six fire extinguisher cases on the third floor, just three actually contained a fire extinguisher. Whoever removed them is subject to prosecution, at least according to a sign on one of the empty extinguisher containers pictured at right.

In addition, it is the opinion of one of our reporters that the smoke detectors are being used as surveillance cameras and motion detectors. Surveillance might be a worthy goal, but those who are taped should know about it and it should not come at the expense of vital safety equipment. We also thought it was lovely that the ceiling tile in the smoke detector photo was cracked. Seems the school doesn't understand the word maintenance.

Our staff has been trying to come up with reasonable explanations for this, but so far, we have yet to discover any. We do know that in the Spring of 2002, there were some interesting events on the third floor, most notably a fire caused by students burning posters on the walls. And there has long been staff concern over minority students loitering in the halls (which probably sparked the recent increase in racial profiling). At one point, the official student newspaper (the Southerner) reported that the school tried to have at least one administrator on the third floor at all times to supervise the area. We don't know where that school employee was when the poster fire occurred, however.

But even so, there doesn't seem to be any excuse for this. It might not even be legal. We say might because we were unable to locate city fire regulations that relate to schools--at least not on the city's website. Every time we tried to click on the law links, they came up as unavailable. While we haven't been able to determine the legality of this in our jurisdiction, a quick web search shows that this practice is not tolerated elsewhere...though an interesting report from an Atlanta TV station paints a picture worse than South's current situation. But if our school system does nothing about this, the horrible conditions in the Atlanta report may come here to Minneapolis.--Harry The Spy, Staff Reporter

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