I now live in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. I belong to a yacht club which owns a 4 story, 100 year old plus, all wooden lodge in a remote location with no fire or ambulance service. On the 3rd and 4th floors there are hotel type rooms for families and guests to stay. There is a fire alarm system but no automatic sprinkler system. I recently made a submission to the appropriate club committee asking for a resolution to proceed with the installation of an automatic fire sprinkler system. Much of my presentation was comparing our lodge to the OLA school, showing the committee many photos from this site, and suggesting that our lodge with its remote location, 3 fireplaces, commercial kitchen and higher number of floors where families sleep, is more hazardous than OLA and is a potential disaster waiting to happen. I quoted passages from the book To Sleep With the Angles referencing how fast the fire spread and that no students or adults from any classroom on the second floor were able to access the 2nd floor hallway to get to the exit stairs. Also the fact that even with the first fire engines arriving within five minutes of the phone call, many lives were still lost. The committee was persuaded and voted unanimously to proceed with the sprinkler system, even though the cost will not be insignificant. The pictures of firemen carrying deceased children our of OLA were very compelling. My point is that all these years later there is still "good" coming out of the 1958 OLA tragedy and that this site continues to serve useful purposes. Thank you.
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