Fei Xiaoci, a senior student at East China Normal University, lives in a small dorm with seven of her classmates. The dorm is only supplied with electricity for a few hours in the evening, lasting until 11:00 pm.

The school has had to take this decision in order to prevent accidental fires in the dorms, such as the one in a Moscow dormitory block recently which was blamed on an electrical fault.

Although the students have shown understanding of the school's decision, it has actually brought them a lot of inconveniences.

"It's annoying," Fei said. "Eight of us have only one computer and we have to wait in turns to use it at night. We can't recharge our cell phone batteries and we can't use the hair-dryer in the daytime."

The municipal fire-fighting department checked all the 50 colleges and universities two days after the tragedy in Moscow on November 24 to make sure that a similar disaster would not happen on local campuses.

Hidden danger

Fires caused by electricity have been considered a major reason for fire accidents on campuses in Shanghai.

So far this year, nine accidents have arisen in local colleges, four of them caused by electric appliances, according to the Shanghai Morning Post.

The most dangerous appliance is a popular water-heater, called "re de kuai" (instantly heating). This is a heat-conductive rod that can be inserted into a thermos, heating the water to boiling point after a few minutes.

Since most dorms in local universities don't supply drinkable hot water, or hot water for showers, the students have to take their thermoses to a hot-water supply station on campus every day. The stations provide hot water for a limited number of hours.

In the college where Fei stays, the hot water supply shuts down after 7:30 pm.

"Therefore, we preferred to use the heater so we don't have to walk up and down the stairs to get the water," she said.

However, using such heaters has been forbidden by all the universities.

"When the students left the heaters on and went off to their classes, it could easily lead to the water evaporating and ultimately to the melting of the outside covers of the thermoses," said Qi Jianguo, an official at Shanghai Jiaotong University. "It could then set fire to things nearby. The dorms were full of books, quilts and other easily ignited stuff."

Rules have been laid down for the confiscation of the heaters whenever they are detected. The unfortunate result was that students began buying cheaper heaters of worse quality from vendors.

"A good quality heater selling for about 20 yuan (US$2.40) automatically cuts off the power when the water has fully evaporated, but the students began buying 5-yuan heaters that don't have this function. Even though the heaters were confiscated, they did not care. They simply bought another one cheaply," Qi said.

While on the other hand, the students thought they had been driven to using the "illegal" appliances because of the inconvenience caused by the school.

"Dishes provided by the dining hall were not very tasty so we sometimes used the electric hot-pot to cook things ourselves, which is also not allowed by the university," Fei said. "We would pay great attention when using the appliances, but sometimes the 'ayi' who is taking care of the building would check the dorms unexpectedly."

The university dorms were densely crowded with students. The six-floor building has nearly 500 dwellers.

A building usually has two independent stairwells and only one exit. An "ayi" is on duty at the exit as a gatekeeper. There is one fire-extinguisher on each floor, but they were only rarely attended to.

When asked where the extinguisher was on the floor where an "ayi" stayed, she couldn't answer. "I have never used it and I don't know how to," she said.

Some buildings have both men's and women's dorms. The local universities didn't allow students of the opposite sex to visit each other's dorms for a number of reasons, such as avoiding opportunities for sexual contact.

Therefore, in the "combined" buildings, there would be a board or iron railings between the two parts to prevent them from visiting each other randomly, but these actually blocked an emergency exit.

"Now we have to keep each building only for men or for women," Qi said.

Furthermore, the telephones installed in the dorms required a specific phone card, which couldn't be connected to 119, the emergent services number.

Solutions

Shanghai Jiaotong University has installed hot-water supply machines on every other floor and fire hydrants in all the dorms, spending more than 1 million yuan (US$120,000).

"We don't have much money but we are planning to install a sprinkler system in several buildings next year," Qi said.

Each student paid 700 to 1,000 yuan (US$85-120) for the dorm every semester in this university.

"This amount of money only covers daily maintenance of the buildings and the school has to use its own funds to improve the fire-safety situations," he said.

Each floor was also installed with an emergency lamp.

In order to educate the students about fire escape skills in emergencies, the school invited professionals to train all the students when they took part in the required drills during their first year at university.

(Shanghai Star December 15, 2003)