Last Monday, UCD Student Centre witnessed yet another microwave-related tragedy. Another student suffered complete evaporation due to incorrect use of the new microwaves. There was an ambulance parked outside the doors, but there was nothing the paramedics could do. “This is one of the worst microwave accidents I’ve ever seen” said veteran paramedic, and head of Dublin Fire Brigade, Sean Fitzsimons. “When we arrived at the scene…it was shocking, have you seen Saving Private Ryan? It was a bit like the opening scene of that’’. He explained how ‘’The student had just completely disappeared’’ and that ‘’all that was left were noodles splattered over the floor and walls and the end of a melted metal fork on the table. The other students were screaming and crying, I don’t think I’ll get over this one quickly”.
The student, who we can’t name out of respect for the family, was a commuter who had brought in a meal from home that his mother had cooked the night before. He had attempted to heat up his food in one of UCD’s recently installed microwaves. However, yet again, disaster struck. It seems as if he used the microwave incorrectly like the others and was instantly vapourised into a cloud: The fifth such of incidents this week.
Margaret O’Reilly, the UCD Officer for Health and Safety, expressed her anger at the situation; “I told them [the Students Union] that there were Health and Safety risks, but they just wouldn’t listen. And now another student has been turned into a hot mass of steam, when will it stop? When will they realise that microwaves are just too dangerous to be available to the general student body?”
Philip Mignon – Turbine Writer
