For many students living off campus, fire safety falls low on the list of concerns about their apartments. But after a fire killed seven college students in North Carolina last month, fire safety has come to light as an issue on - and, perhaps more importantly, off - college campuses.
On the morning of Oct. 28, 13 students from the University of South Carolina and Clemson University were spending the weekend at a beach house in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C. when the fire struck and killed seven. According to Campus Firewatch, a monthly newsletter about national campus fire concerns, these deaths raise the national toll of fire-related deaths at colleges to nine for this academic year.
At Tufts, all on-campus residents have two fire drills each year that force them to practice escaping from their building quickly and without warning. According to the Tufts fire marshal's office, off-campus residents must rely more on themselves when it comes to thinking about fire safety.
"The students are usually older offcampus, so there is less supervision: no R.A.'s or R.D.'s," Tufts Assistant Fire Marshal Wayne Springer said.
The Tufts Department of Public and Environmental Safety publishes a pamphlet for prospective student renters outlining what to ask the landlord and what to be aware of during move-in.
The pamphlet recommends asking questions about how frequently fire detector batteries are tested and changed and whether the owner has ever had a fire in one of his or her buildings.
Senior Becca Solomont explained that fire safety was on the checklist for her and her roommates when they started looking for an off-campus apartment. "The thing that I was most concerned about was whether or not there were working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors," she said.
But on the whole, students say fire safety is not on their minds when it comes to finding and maintaining an off-campus house. According to Solomont, other off-campus renters are generally not as diligent as she and her housemates were in examining fire safety issues.
"I think we were an anomaly - we were a little over-attentive. We started looking in the end of September in sophomore year, and we wanted to make sure that we did everything right," she said.
Junior Christina Kelly admitted that she and her roommates had minimal concerns with fire during their apartment search.
"Fire safety wasn't the first thing [my housemates and I] were concerned with, but we made sure there was a fire escape and that everything was okay before we signed our lease," Kelly said.
Springer said that while he understands that students may have other, greater concerns than fire safety when shopping for apartments, it should be on everyone's mind during the process.
"This is not on [college students'] radar. They are young; they just don't think about it, but what happens if fires do happen?"
Parents may be more concerned with fires than students, and that plays some role in how student house-hunters go about looking for apartments, according to Solomont. "My roommates and I talked to our parents about things we needed to be aware of in terms of fire safety," she explained.
According to Campus Firewatch, 113 college students have died in fires since January 2000. Eighty percent of those deaths have been in off-campus housing. The Tufts fire marshal's office blames this on two factors: alcohol and unfamiliarity with off-campus houses.
"Alcohol is a factor in most hazardous situations," Springer said. "There's often no responsible adult that's around and not drinking to make sure that problems don't happen."
Springer also explained why students off campus can become confused in case of fire.
"You have a large area [off campus] that many people are unfamiliar with because they have never been there before. They might be visiting, so it is very easy for them to become disoriented in a smoke-filled environment," he said.
While the North Carolina fire's cause has yet to be determined, authorities speculate that it was unintentional and started on a balcony where there could have been smoking or grilling. Last February there was a similar off-campus fatality due to an accidental fire closer to home: At Boston University, one student used a candle to see during a power outage, and the candle led to the start of a much larger fire.
Students living on campus have much less to worry about, according to Springer. "This campus is very well-protected in the residential buildings with fire detection and protection systems," he said.
Springer offered advice for students who do live off campus who want to make sure their apartments are safe.
"Hard-wired smoke detectors are the best, rather than relying on just battery-operated ones that students could take apart to stop it from accidentally going off," he said. "Why not practice [a fire drill] sometime? Do you have a second egress? Always know a second way out."
