Police concerned about Roninmäki M-building parties – Serious safety risks

It has come to our attention that the local police and the rescue department are concerned about serious safety risks present in the parties organized in Roninmäki M-building. We hope students would understand the seriousness of the current situation and the security risks involved with organizing and participating in these events. We are sincerely concerned for the safety of our students.

The authorities have explained that the M-building in Roninmäki is not suitable for organising big events, especially for the amounts of people that have been attending (several hundreds of people) for the following reasons:

• The building is especially dangerous from a fire safety standpoint since there is only one exit in the building.
• The authorities have specified that in the case of a fire, lifting people out through the windows would be impossible because it would not be possible to get the required equipment near the building. So, there would be only one way out of the building for hundreds of people.
• Since the building is intended for living purposes only, there is a risk that the building may even collapse if there are too many people in the building at the same time. It is not structurally safe for such large amounts of people.

All in all, it is fortunate that nothing very serious has happened so far, but the risk is high and if something were to happen, the consequences could be devastating. In Youtube there are catastrophic videos about real-life cases where things went wrong, e.g. about a fire in a nightclub with only one exit. We did not put the link in this notice because it is so shocking.

When organising such an event gathering a large group of people, the Finnish law states that the organisers should apply for a permit from the authorities beforehand. However, such a permit could never be granted for the Roninmäki M-building, since the building has not been designed for this kind of use, and therefore does not meet the requirements in order to be a safe and suitable venue for such events. Therefore every organiser of such an event or every tenant allowing their apartment to be utilised for the event breaks the law (the Rescue Act, sections 3§, 4§, 9§ and 10§, see more: http://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/kaannokset/2011/en20110379.pdf ).

We wish to emphasize that the main issue and primary concern here is the safety of the students!

International Services, JAMK