Christopher Cross: Fire and ice
It looked like a case of: when the cat's away, the mice will play. But the mice, as it turned out, continued to play even when McGill's fire prevention officer returned from vacation last month. No respect?! Not quite. More a question of risky work on a high-risk building, says Christopher Cross, back from a week of hiking in New Mexico and Colorado.
That work, of course, was reroofing the Arthur Currie Gym, something that has involved two minor fires and one more important one -- not to mention two evacuations. Cross is reluctant to put too much blame on the roofing company, saying that hot asphalt roofing on top of a structure that is, in part, made of wood is inherently dangerous.
Cross is in a position to know. He's been a part-time firefighter since age 18 and an inspector since age 21. Knowing the design, construction, vocation, population and fire safety of each of McGill's (including the Macdonald Campus's) 241 buildings is part of the workload he took on three years ago as the University's first fire prevention officer.
It wasn't a job he'd seen himself doing when he began studying microbiology at the University. Biotechnology was his interest, student politics his sideline, and part-time bartending and fire consulting at Macdonald his sources of revenue. But when opportunity came knocking, Cross leapt.
"I hadn't planned on this as a career," says Cross, "but it interested me because it was new; it gave me something to develop."
Cross has what his boss, Environmental Safety Office manager Wayne Wood, laughingly calls "genetically acquired" skills. Cross's father was chief of the Otterburn Park Fire Department and young Christopher passed many a happy hour playing in the firetrucks and ringing the fabled firebell. Cross, who keeps his dad's hardhat close at hand in his office, jokes that he was "conceived after a fire practice."
One of the skills necessary in this multifaceted job is to know what to do when. Wood, Cross's on-call stand-in every other weekend, is impressed by his colleague's ability to "manage many things simultaneously.
"He's spread very, very thin but he's never lost it," notes Wood.
Some of Cross's tasks include negotiating with the city of Montreal on the subject of the University's lack of "code compliance." Given the age of McGill's buildings, most aren't up to today's fire safety code and Cross is in constant touch with the city, informing inspectors of the changing status of the buildings. He also looks into all fires and acts as the liaison person with the Montreal fire department which fights and investigates the University's 10 to 20 major annual fires, the bulk of which are caused by laboratory fires and construction mishaps.
A priority for Cross is standardizing and networking all alarm systems on campus. At present, most alarms register at the security office, but they don't state where in a building the fire is, nor give its nature. New systems can do just that and McGill should have one in two year's time. Cross has a vested interest in the new system. Being on 24-hour call, he comes in after hours from La Salle an average of once every two weeks, sometimes because there's a fire and sometimes because there's a problem with the alarm system that he can't solve over the phone with the security dispatcher.
There are 10 false alarms for every genuine one, notes Cross, explaining that in older alarm systems, it may take nothing more than dirt to trigger the siren. Of course, during the "high period," September, student pranks and partying set off their fair share of true and false alarms.
The multitude of demands on knowledge, physical stamina and patience with bureaucracy are great in this job, but Cross maintains that it is his training as a competitive figure skater, as much as his firefighting experience, that helps him handle the pressure. From ages five to 20, Cross trained up to 40 hours per week on his blades, competing at the junior national level and quitting couples ice dancing only when there wasn't the right match of partner. While he found it hard leaving skating, he is grateful for the ability to focus on one task at a time that the sport gave him.
Now, when Cross needs to take a break, it's more likely hiking boots or an Aikido jacket he'll don than ice skates, though occasionally he may be caught at the Molson Winter Stadium, doing a double flip or two.
Bronwyn Chester
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