“This idea came about when a parent was sitting in freshman orientation for his son and they were talking about how the RAs hold regular floor meetings to talk about important issues,” said Minger Foundation President Gail Minger. “When we looked into it, we had a difficult time finding resources that RAs could use for fire safety, so we set out to create them.

Read the entire article from Fire Engineering.com.

Series of free posters, videos and online guide are designed to help RAs in delivering fire safety education

Niceville, FL, February 2, 2012 – An innovative set of integrated, multimedia tools are available for Resident Assistants to use in reaching out to the students in their residence halls. Developed by the Michael H. Minger Foundation, with the help of RAs and students, a series of posters, videos and web pages all blend together to provide invaluable fire safety information to students.

“This idea came when a parent was sitting in freshman orientation for his son and they were talking about how the RAs hold regular floor meetings to talk about important issues,” said Minger Foundation President Gail Minger. “When we looked into it, we had a difficult time finding resources that RAs could use for fire safety so we set out to create them.

Over 80% of fatal campus-related fires happen in off-campus homes, most recently in Poughkeepsie, New York, where three people lost their lives in a tragic fire. In addition, fires in apartment buildings in Boston and Brookline, as well as fires in Virginia and Michigan that destroyed two fraternities, injured students, some critically, all within the past few weeks. “Teaching students about fire safety while they are living in the residence halls is an invaluable opportunity before they move out and live off-campus,” added Mrs. Minger. “These are, literally, lessons for life.”

There are a series of eight posters with fire safety messages focusing on on-campus, off-campus and Greek fire safety that RAs can download for free and print out to use on bulletin boards on their floors. Each poster has a QR code on it that, when scanned with a smartphone, will take the students to a web page with more information and short videos. Each of the videos features RAs from Eastern Kentucky University talking about fire safety as well as students from Northeastern University. RAs from across the country were brought together through a Facebook group to assist in creating this program..

To help the RAs talk about fire safety during floor meetings, an RA Guide to Teaching Fire Safety was developed. This Guide has two sections, one focusing on topics such as candles, cooking, smoke alarms, smoking and fire sprinklers with fire safety messages developed by the National Fire Protection Association along with additional explanatory material from the Minger Foundation. The second part is a compilation of the posters and the material on each of the landing pages where the QR codes take the students. This is designed to help the RAs become familiar with the information that the students will be seeing. Both sections contain links to more resources available from the United States Fire Administration and the National Fire Protection Association.

Since the Minger Foundation’s mission is to develop fire safety programs for college students with a focus on students with disabilities, the web site and videos have been developed with universal design in mind, such as closed-captioning. “By creating programs on fire safety for students with disabilities, we are creating fire safety programs for everyone,” said Mrs. Minger. Earlier, the Minger Foundation launched another series of videos focusing on fire safety for students with disabilities as well as a Guide to Teaching Fire Safety to Students with Disabilities which can also be found on the Foundation’s web site.

The posters, videos, landing pages and Guide can be found at http://www.mingerfoundation.org/projects/ra/.

This project was funded by a DHS Fire Prevention and Safety Grant to the Minger Foundation and was developed in conjunction with Campus Firewatch.

The non-profit Michael H. Minger Foundation was established in 2005 to honor the life of Michael H. Minger, an outstanding young man, who lost his life in a college dormitory fire. The purpose of the Foundation is to improve fire safety standards and enhance fire safety systems on college and university campuses, with a focus on fire safety for students with disabilities, and to educate parents and students and raise awareness of the reality and risk of campus fires.

PO Box 721, Niceville, FL ● 32588 ● (850) 621-5161
www.mingerfoundation.org ●

National organizations are working together to develop a local program involving students in fire safety outreach after the fire that claimed the lives of two international students at Emporia State University

NICEVILLE, Fla. November 18, 2011 – Two international students attending Emporia State University from the Liaoning province in China were killed in an off-campus fire in Emporia, Kansas, on October 25, 2011. According to the Emporia Fire Department, the cause of the fire was combustibles placed too close to a floor furnace. Since January 2000, over 85% of campus-related fire fatalities have occurred in off-campus housing, according to Campus Firewatch.

This tragedy is bringing together several national organizations to help address the problem of off-campus fires and, in this case, those involving international students. The Michael H. Minger Foundation has launched several successful Campus Fire Safety Community Service Projects with students and schools in North Carolina and, most recently, at Eastern Kentucky University, and is bringing its experience in these efforts to Emporia. Prevention Officer Corey Lewis from the Richmond (Kentucky) Fire Department was closely involved in the EKU launch, and the Minger Foundation has arranged for him to travel to Emporia and meet with the Emporia Fire Department, officials from Emporia State University, and campus and fire officials from other Kansas college and university communities on Monday, November 21, to explain the program and help launch a similar effort in Emporia.

The Campus Fire Safety Community Service Project is a program where students go out into the community alongside fire fighters to conduct smoke alarm installations and fire safety education in high-risk homes with two goals. The first is to raise the level of fire safety in the homes by making sure they are equipped with working smoke alarms and providing the occupants with fire safety information. The second goal is to teach the students about fire safety by having them actively take part in delivering it to the community through this service program, creating a win-win situation for everyone.

Joining with the Minger Foundation in supporting this effort is the Jasmine Jahanshahi Fire Safety Foundation which is donating 50 First Alert smoke alarms. This foundation was formed after the death of Jasmine who, while on an international study program in Paris, France, died in an apartment fire along with four others. The Jasmine Jahanshahi Fire Safety Foundation works to raise the awareness of the importance of fire safety for students involved in international study programs.

Campus Firewatch, which has been closely involved in the development of the Campus Fire Safety Community Service Project since its inception, is providing coordination and technical assistance for this effort.

“By directly involving the students in delivering fire safety to the community and their peers, everyone benefits,” said Michael H. Minger Foundation President Gail Minger. “The students learn, first-hand, about fire safety and the residents get safer homes. I am looking forward to working with Emporia Fire Department and the university community and helping in any way we can.”

The Campus Fire Safety Community Service Project was originally funded by a grant from the Department of Homeland Security Fire Prevention and Safety Grant program to the Michael H. Minger Foundation. The goal is for these programs in North Carolina, Kentucky and Kansas to serve as examples for other communities across the nation on how to improve fire safety for everyone by involving students in delivering community service projects.

The Michael H. Minger Foundation was formed after the death of Michael in a residence hall fire. It focuses on fire safety on our nation’s campuses with an emphasis on fire safety for students with disabilities. For more information go to www.mingerfoundation.org or www.facebook.com/mingerfoundation.

The Jasmine Jahanshahi Fire Safety Foundation was founded following the death of Jasmine in a Paris, France, apartment fire while studying abroad. The foundation focuses on fire safety for international students. For more information go to www.firesafetyfoundation.org, www.facebook.com/FireSafetyFoundation and @JUSTICEcorps

Campus Firewatch is a social enterprise and newsletter that, since 2000, has worked to raise the awareness of campus fire safety across the nation. More information can be found at www.campus-firewatch.com, www.facebook.com/campusfirewatch and @campusfirewatch.

Gail Minger, founder of the Michael H. Minger Foundation, EKU President Doug Whitlock and other officials were on hand to kick off “Help Save A Life, Get on the Truck,” which pairs EKU students with Richmond Fire Department officers to engage the campus and community in projects that will enhance safety.

Read the entire article at the Eastern Kentucky University web site

RICHMOND, KY (WAVE) – A Florida woman whose son died in a dorm fire at a Kentucky university is helping to launch a program at Eastern Kentucky University that will teach students about fire safety. Gail Minger founded the Minger Foundation in honor of … Read the article at WAVE3.

Her son was killed in a fire in his college dorm more than a decade ago. Since then Gail Minger has made it her mission to promote fire safety on campuses across Kentucky. Monday, Minger visited EKU to help launch a new community service project. Read the article at WKYT.

September 22, 2011
For Immediate Release:

Thirteen years to the day after Michael Minger was laid to rest after being killed in an arson fire at Murray State University, a grand jury has returned 17 indictments against Jerry Walker, now 35, who has turned himself into the Kentucky State Police on Thursday.

Statement from Michael’s mother Gail Minger on arrest:

“This is such an incredible day not only for me, but for all of those other students and fire fighters that were injured in this fire. I cannot say enough about how much I appreciate the Kentucky State Police, the state’s Office of the Attorney General and investigators – some of which kept on the case after retirement – for continuing to pursue this case

“Michael had a learning disability that impacted his ability to escape from the fire. Since that time we have worked to improve safety on campuses, everywhere. We want to be sure young people, like the young man arrested today, understand the dangers of fire and do not put others lives in danger.”

Following the fire in 1998, Mrs. Minger formed the Michael H. Minger Foundation to help raise awareness about fire safety on campuses across the nation, especially for students with disabilities. The Minger Foundation, just last week, launched a series of videos and a training guide to assist fire safety educators in delivering fire safety education to students with disabilities.

Online guide, videos and research will aid schools and communities across the nation

NICEVILLE, Florida, September 19, 2011 – The Michael H. Minger Foundation (www.mingerfoundation.org) has published a series of online videos, a Guide to Teaching Fire Safety to Students with Disabilities and compiled extensive online research to help address the safety of students with hearing, vision or mobility disabilities or learning disorders. This project is in response to the findings of an analysis done by the Foundation that identified a gap on campuses in delivering fire safety information to this demographic.

The four videos feature students with disabilities showing their role in preventing a fire and what to do if one should break out. A fifth video focuses on helping fire safety educators by having the students, along with a fire captain with a son who has Autism, talk about how to best work with people with different disabilities. These short videos are designed to appeal to the “YouTube” generation and are closed-captioned for those that are deaf or hearing impaired.

Accompanying these videos is an online Guide that provides a wealth of information on how to interact with people with disabilities to ensure that the training is delivered as effectively as possible. This guide builds off of invaluable research done by a number of organizations across the country and much of this research has been compiled as part of this project and is available at the Foundation’s web site.

“Our goal is to provide the tools and one-stop resource that fire safety educators can use in teaching students with disabilities the life-saving information they can use, not only for the time they are in school, but for the rest of their lives,” said Minger Foundation President Gail Minger. “Providing fire safety education that is tailored for their needs is so critical to making sure that these students are prepared in the event of an emergency, no matter where they are.”

This project was funded by a grant to the Michael H. Minger Foundation from the Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Fire Prevention and Safety Grant program.

The Michael H. Minger Foundation was founded after the death of Michael Minger in an arson fire at Murray State University in Kentucky. Michael was a sophomore pursuing degrees in Broadcast Journalism and Music/Vocal Performance. Michael had a non-verbal learning disability, which is on the Autism spectrum and was a contributing factor to his death. The Foundation’s mission is to raise the awareness and standards of campus fire safety for all students with a special focus on students with disabilities.

Michael H. Minger Foundation | PO Box 721 | Niceville, Florida 32588 | 850-621-5161
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mingerfoundation | www.mingerfoundation.org