Fire guts Mansfield JCR
Mansfield College's JCR was hit by a fire in the early hours of Friday morning leaving one side of the common room gutted and denying students access to the JCR for at least the next few weeks.
Alarms were triggered at 4am last Friday after the fire started in the common room building, which also houses the college library as well as the MCR. The alarms were then activated in the college's accommodation block, which was quickly evacuated.
The fire brigade was quickly on the scene and managed to confine the blaze to the JCR. However they were unable to prevent extensive damage that could keep the room out of action for the foreseeable future, leaving students "simmering" with anger, according to JCR President Ed Mayne.
The cause of the fire is yet to be determined but Principal of the College, Diana Walford, told The Oxford Student that no-one was suspecting foul play: "The cause of the fire has not been ascertained definitively, but there is no reason to suppose that it was anything other than accidental."
The firemen investigating the incident have not yet submitted their report but the fire is believed to have originated on one side of the JCR and it quickly hit a lectern and a canopy and was fuelled by the wooden panelling on the wall. "Neither the library nor the computer room was damaged and both are fully accessible to students, but the JCR is unusable in its current state", Walford ackowledged.
The wrecked items, as well as much of the furniture which suffered permanent smoke damage, will have to be replaced and the entire room will require redecoration.
Mayne expressed relief that the fire had not spread further: "It was a miraculous escape for the library, which is just above the JCR. With all that wood and paper, the damage could have been devastating. We're lucky the fire service got here just in time."
While the fire service's investigation into the blaze continues, the thoughts of the students remain firmly on when they can have their JCR back.
Mansfield MCR and nearby Wadham's JCR have both thrown open their doors to their homeless colleagues but Mayne acknowledges that the situation is far from perfect: "It's only now that I've realised how much I use the JCR and how annoying it is that it's not available. It is kind of Wadham and the MCR to help us out but we need an official place of our own to relax."
The college insists it is doing everything in its power to restore the damaged common room as quickly as possible. Although the building's structure is not under threat, the common room itself remains unsafe.
The college's insurers, Royal and Sun Alliance, were called to assess the damage on the first working day after the fire and although he believes students are unhappy, Mayne praised the college's speedy efforts to get things up and running again,
He particularly praised the assistance offered by the Junior Dean and the Bursar, Steve Waterman: "Members of the SCR are onside with this", Mayne told The Oxford Student: "We've got no complaints."
Neither Mayne nor the College could give an accurate assessment of when the restoration would be complete but the JCR President told this paper that it was likely to be a considerable length of time before the common room was ready for use by members of the JCR: "I think we're talking weeks here, not days or months."
Mayne has only been in the job for a few weeks and, unable to resist the pun, ruefully observed that his new role had been a real "baptism of fire."
Mayne also conveyed his concern as to the fate of the college pool team, who currently top Division One of the college pool league: "The pool table is out of action from the smoke damage", he explained, "I'm worried the players might get out of practice."
27th Jan 2005