THE SANTA ANA COLLEGE, A TWO-YEAR COMMUNITY COLLEGE in Orange County, California, has had broken and disabled fire alarm systems in its classroom buildings for years, yet no action was taken to have them repaired.

While management-level people have always known about the problems, they never took any actions to correct them, nor did they ever inform the college Board of Trustees.  The trustees are naturally furious over this.

The situation only became publicly known when the student newspaper El Don ran an investigative report exposing the years-long cover-up going on.  There are 11 buildings without functioning fire alarms which are required by State law.  In some cases it is because they have never been maintained, such as dead battery systems or rusted controls.  In some instances they were just switched off because the bells kept ringing.  The campus security building is one of those that has a broken alarm system.

The Rancho Santiago Community College District, which operates the college, has hired a law firm to find out why nothing was done for more than two years after reports documented the problems.

“It is an unacceptable practice to compromise the safety of our students or visitors,” said Board of Trustees President John Hanna, who called an emergency meeting Tuesday for trustees to pass a resolution to repair the alarms. “Inspectors don’t issue reports just for the fun of doing it. Somebody knew about this and made a conscious decision not to do anything about it. Clearly something’s rotten in Denmark, and we’re going to find out about it.”

Ironically, SAC has one of the State’s best Fire Administration degree programs.  One Orange County firefighter is quoted as saying:  “When I was taking my Fire Tech classes, our instructors used the buildings on campus as examples of fire code violations.”

Read the full story in the Orange County Register HERE

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