In the past five months, fatal fires have struck fraternities at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, Washington State University and a dormitory at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
In response to fire safety in off-campus housing, the Eugene Fire Department began the Fire Safety Academy, a program designed to educate fraternity and sorority members about how they can prevent fatal fires.
“Can this happen here?” Assistant Deputy Fire Marshal Reggie Augsburger asked. “Of course it can.”
Common problems at fraternities and sororities include blocked fire exits, disconnected smoke detectors and intentionally disabled fire alarms, Augsburger said.
Augsburger stresses the responsibility is on the students to take care of their own houses.
“The whole focus shouldn’t be to depend on the fire department to make us safe,” Augsburger said. “They need to do that. We need to put more accountability on them.”
Greek houses on campus seem to be answering the call.
“It’s a big issue to our housing corporation,” said Grant Williams, a political science major and member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon. “They’ve used allocated funds to make the house fire safe.”
Fire safety is an especially important issue to this house because the last fatal fire at the University happened at their chapter’s house 20 years ago. On April 5, 1980, a fire occurred at the SAE house on 14th Avenue and Alder Street, killing one girl who was trapped on the third floor.
“As a result of the incident, the house has been equipped with fire doors,” Williams said. “Fire safety is obviously a huge issue.”
Another house on campus, the Sigma Kappa sorority, has responded to the Fire Safety Academy by educating its members about the need for fire safety.
“It’s better safe than sorry, so we’re taking the necessary precautions to keep the house safe,” said Alison Craig, a journalism major and the house manager.
Augsburger stresses the importance of education, but he said installing sprinkler systems in houses is a great avenue to fire safety.
“It takes a sprinkler system to make a house more safe,” he said. “If you have a fire, it should keep it small and manageable. … It’s like having a firefighter stationed at every one of the sprinkler heads, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.”
Augsburger said almost 100 percent of the time, sprinklers will put the fire out before the fire department gets to it. And in the cases where it doesn’t, it will control the fire in the minutes before the department arrives on scene.
Augsburger said not every sprinkler in the house will go off when the system is activated. Each head is independently triggered by heat, not smoke, and oftentimes a sprinkler in one room can go off while an adjacent one in the hall will not.
“You’re not going to set them off by lighting a match to light your cigarette,” he said.
Another advantage is sprinklers save a great deal of water. While the hoses on fire trucks use up to 100 gallons of water per minute, sprinklers use only 20 gallons.
Craig said getting sprinklers is on her house’s “to do list,” but they are expensive. Augsburger said, however, you cannot put a price on human lives.
“How much is a life worth?” he asked. “It’s the same as putting in new carpeting.”
The University has established a policy that if fraternities and sororities do not pass fire inspections, they will not receive the University’s endorsement.
“I think it’s pretty critical when they try to recruit membership that they have the University’s endorsement,” Augsburger said. “If they don’t, it’s kind of a black eye.”
But Augsburger maintains that educating members is the real way to keep the greek houses fire safe.
“All we can do is give them the tools … they have to take charge,” he said. “I think we’re going in the right direction. The Fire Safety Academy is working.”