The Department of Environmental Health & Safety and the Off-Campus Living Office are teaming up to educate students -particularly those who do not live in residence halls -about fire prevention.
Ed Comeau, director of the Center for Campus Fire Safety, a national advocacy group, said more than 75 percent of all campus fires fatalities occur in off-campus housing.
The four most common factors in campus fires are lack of sprinklers, bad smoke alarms, careless disposal of smoking materials and alcohol. All these factors are frequent occurrences in most off-campus housing.
Educating students is the key
Comeau said. College is a great chance to reach out to young people to teach them this information so that it will stay with them their entire lives.
The task to educate students about fire safety grows more difficult when they leave the residence halls and move into off-campus housing, said Jim Hintz, director of the Off-Campus Living Office.
I think that when students are moving into off-campus housing they're responsible for a lot more. They aren't really thinking about fire safety he said.
Last spring, the Department of Environmental Health & Safety and the Off-Campus Living Office worked together to produce a Web site dedicated to teaching students in off-campus housing proper safety techniques.
The Web site,
>www.ohiou.edu/ehs/off_campus_housing.htm, addresses a variety of safety issues that concern off-campus living, including a section on fire safety.
In addition to the Web site, the Department of Environmental Health & Safety and the Off-Campus Living Office are working together to teach students living off-campus about the importance of fire safety.
The two organizations are writing a grant in an attempt to gain federal funds to pay for the project.
Hintz said the two groups had considered purchasing smoke detectors for all off-campus housing but decided to pursue fire education after learning that all residences already are fitted with a smoke alarm, according to Athens Building Code.
The campus fire safety movement has been gathering steam recently, and several bills related to the issue have been introduced to Congress.
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio, recently proposed two bills concerning campus fire safety.
The first would designate September as National Campus Fire Safety Month to encourage colleges to raise fire prevention awareness. The second would set up a federal fund to give grants to colleges to set up fire safety measures in Greek organizations and residence buildings.
According to Center for Campus Safety statistics, Ohio leads the nation in campus fire fatalities with 12 deaths in the past five years. Five OU students have died as a result of campus fires in that time. Two died in an off-campus fire in Athens in 2001. Another fire at Ohio State University in 2003 killed five people, three of which were OU students.
I don't think there is anything inherently more dangerous about Ohio
but the state must be more vigilant and more concerned
Comeau said.
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