The maintenance and replacement works of the electrical network in the student dormitories belonging to the Politehnica University of Bucharest cannot be carried out even during the summer, when there is a vacation, said rector Mihnea Costoiu. He explained that during the works all the rooms should be empty, but many students do not vacate them. The reason? Because they work, young people have nowhere to go home.
Student dormitories are decades old buildings. Source: archive
Asked about the state of modernization of the student dormitories equipped with electrical networks for decades and which would be the basis of the recent fires, Rector Costoiu told the Recorder that “those buildings, I’m talking about buildings from the 1960s, are buildings built on structural models that are completely outdated. However, the network, which cannot support today’s equipment, could not be improved either because the operating approval from the electricity supplier would have been given for the same weak current power”.
The rector also specified that “you can’t have a refrigerator, an air conditioner, a heater, a hair brush and all of them working at the same time. It’s a city we’ve taken and we’re trying to manage it as such and make it better. We are not perfect, God forbid, the university has the responsibility and we assume it”.
Mihnea Costoiu testified that the electrical installation was changed a few years ago and “we keep changing it. The electrical installation cannot be changed with students in the dormitory. And this home was never free. The Computer students especially wanted to have continuity including during the summer because they work. So we didn’t have time to intervene because their desire was to live in the summer as well. We’re coming back, now replacing sockets where there are problems and replacing electrical panels so as to reduce the risks. In P16 and P22, the installations were made, if I’m not mistaken, about 10 years ago”, the rector also specified.
The students are outraged: “We don’t have a kitchen in the halls. We cook in the rooms”
“In theory, we are prohibited from any large consumer, but for them the refrigerator is also a large consumer. The contract says we have a kitchen in the hallways, but we don’t, so we cook in the room. At most we have a microwave oven, an airfryer that doesn’t stay plugged in 24/7. And everyone else has a refrigerator. Where is the kitchen that says it must be equipped in every dorm?”a student asks indignantly.
As for the instructions given by the dormitory administrators in case of fire, the young people say that there is no such thing! “We were not instructed. I also worked for the corporation and they were done once every few months. The exit procedures, let’s do this, this and we have this, are posted on the wall. But an instruction in itself, especially for how it was now, an electrical fire… A colleague of mine and the maid went to the fire hydrant. For an electrical fire you can’t use water, but something with carbon dioxide.. Something happens at night… until the firemen come… first aid? We don’t know. Maybe someone uses foam and gets electrocuted.”
The young man also talks about the fact that the sockets were checked before the fire in the P22 dormitory on September 22: “A week ago they were in strict control for the sockets, to see if they were ok, they measured them. I know about the control with the sockets because I was also then. They went, plugged something in and went to the next room.”
Only two buildings in UPB’s Regie campus have fire safety permits and one – an authorization in this regard, according to a response from the Bucharest-Ilfov Emergency Situations Inspectorate.
