Inventing the Great Escape

Ivars Avots '56 with engineer Herb Loeffler demonstrating the personal escape device they invented.

Imagine that you live or work near the top of a skyscraper, and a fire breaks out. Some stairs are blocked by debris and people, others by intense smoke and heat. The fire truck's ladder cannot reach above the fifth floor.

What if there was another way out, one you could control yourself? Thanks to Ivars Avots '56, there soon will be.

Avots, along with engineer Herb Loeffler, has invented and received a patent for the EasyDown, a coil of steel cable attached to a harness and equipped with brakes. One end of the cable attaches to a large or stationary object. The operator then lowers himself from an available window, much as a rock climber rappels down a cliff.

The EasyDown is only one of the many inventions Avots has created through the years. He unveiled his first invention as a 13-year-old in war-torn Latvia. "Everything was in short supply," Avots says. When a local store received a supply of packaging tape, everybody would rush out to buy it. "The problem was that the tape was sold from a large roll, and people had to stand around rolling it up after they bought it. After surveying the situation, I went back the following day with a round box equipped with a spool and a handle," he says. He bought 60 yards of tape and quickly rolled it up, causing onlookers to nickname him "the young inventor."

Avots was 19 when he came to the United States. He worked in a shirt factory before getting a scholarship to attend Susquehanna, where he studied business administration. From SU he went to the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

He was later hired by Arthur D. Little Inc., where the idea to equip tall buildings with escape wires was first explored. Eventually, though, the idea was dropped.

Then came 9/11, the day when at least 200 people jumped from the burning towers of the World Trade Center. Now, despite the fact that the EasyDown is not yet in production, orders are coming in from high-rise residents in Beijing and other cities around the world.

Use of the device is still restricted in the United States due to concerns that personal escape methods such as the EasyDown could interfere with firefighting operations and conflict with standard rescue and evacuation procedures. As a result, EasyDown will be manufactured in Latvia and distributed in Eastern Europe, where there have been well-publicized, tragic events as well as a boom in high-rise construction.

Despite the obstacles his invention has encountered in the United States, Avots says, "I think it is just a matter of time until people realize that safety is worth paying for."

- Erin Markel '07

 

Life-Changing Service

Emily Bowling '06 examines hurricane damage during a tour of the Ninth Ward of New Orleans in January 2006.

Before she became coordinator of volunteer programs at Susquehanna University, Emily Bowling '06 had planned to go to graduate school to study biology or medicine. But when Bowling was a senior, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

She watched the reports and saw the devastation and the needs of the people there. "I donated some money to the relief effort but wanted to do so much more," Bowling says. So she signed up for Susquehanna's first Hurricane Relief Trip (HRT) that year. "It seemed my time and energy was the best thing I could give." (See related story.)

While in Louisiana, Bowling says she"began to sincerely reconsider the career path I had always seen myself going down." The trip, which took place five months after Katrina hit, made her realize that although people in the upper- and middle-class communities were picking up the pieces, the poorest residents either had no means of returning home or no hope of receiving aid. "Before the trip, I was well aware of class divides and the socioeconomic status disparities within the country, but those issues came to life more than ever during my time in New Orleans," Bowling says.

The resilience of New Orleans' residents inspired Bowling. They "reinforced the notion that success and prosperity should never be measured by money or material items, but by how we use our lives to impact and help others."

Today, Bowling is nearing the end of her two-year AmeriCorps placement at Susquehanna as the coordinator of volunteer programs.

At Susquehanna, Bowling coordinates service programs such as the hurricane relief trips - which have continued each winter, spring and summer since 2006 - as well as blood drives and the Flex for Hunger program that enables students to donate leftover dining hall cash to a homeless shelter or food bank.

"My position is rewarding because I am able to coordinate transformative service experiences for students," Bowling says.

She organizes yearly service events for incoming first-year students and upperclassmen, and co-instructs the service-learning class Disaster Impacts in Society: Hurricane Katrina, an interdisciplinary course that teaches students about the multilayered impacts disasters can have on society. She also advises SUN Council, the umbrella organization for campus service groups, and supervises student service volunteers.

"I enjoy working at SU for some of the same reasons I chose to attend here as an undergraduate. The small campus size allows for meaningful relationship building between staff and students," Bowling says.

When she completes her AmeriCorps placement at SU, Bowling hopes to study educational policy, social justice or environmental justice at Portland State University and eventually earn a Ph.D. so she can teach at the college level. "I'd like to be in a position that allows me to challenge young adults to be engaged in politics, social justice and environmentalism, as well as to question the destructive social, environmental and economic policies and structures that exist in this country and in the world at large," Bowling says.

- Erin Markel '07