Holding Fire

When a Leverett House fire alarm rang last Sunday afternoon, G-tower residents followed what has come to be a familiar routine: They filed out of the building, stood in the cold and expected to be let back inside once officials realized it was a false alarm.

Last Sunday, however, the alarm was real.

Fortunately, the fire was small--a small pile of leaves in a ventilation grate had been ignited by a discarded cigarette--and posed little threat to the building.

But for students waiting to return to their rooms, the sight of eight fire trucks and columns of white smoke pouring from the grate was enough to cause concern, especially in the wake of a Jan. 19 Seton Hall University dormitory fire, which killed three students.

Clearly there is no foolproof way to prevent a similar incident on Harvard's campus. But University and local officials say campus buildings stand out as among the best-protected college structures in the country, both because of the advanced fire prevention technology already in place, and because of the firefighters who protect them.

"Anything we've asked for, they've always agreed to," says Gerald R. Reardon, deputy chief of the Cambridge Fire Department (CFD).

A Hot Topic

In the month of January alone, additional fires at the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the University of New Mexico made national headlines and highlighted fire safety problems common on college campuses.

Aging dorms, outdated fire systems and student apathy toward fire alarms make college campuses particularly dangerous places when it comes to fires.

But officials say the University has worked especially hard in the last few years to upgrade fire safety measures across the board.

According to CFD estimates, Harvard College has spent several hundred thousand dollars over the past several years to improve safety systems in the residence buildings alone.

Among the improvements was the installation of fire alarms that flash a strobe light in addition to sounding an alarm when activated.

Fire alarms across the campus are all linked to a central data-gathering site, which University engineers staff around the clock. The system was upgraded within the past few years and plays a crucial role in the University's response to a potential fire, says Thomas E. Vautin, associate vice president for facilities and environmental services.

"That's all very state of the art," Vautin says.

When a smoke detector goes off in a House room, a signal is transmitted to the control center but does not immediately set off fire alarms in the rest of the building. If the alarm does not reset in a short period of time, however, control center computers trigger alarms in the rest of the building and activate the University's fire response plan.

But according to Harvard Manager of Electrical Engineering and Utilities Daniel K. Wong, the alarm systems are only the "first line of defense."

More important, says Wong, are the extensive series of fire suppression systems--and especially sprinklers--that exist in Harvard's buildings.

Nationwide, most college housing structures lack sprinklers. Indeed, according to the National Fire Protection Association, a Quincy, Mass.-based industry group, 72 percent of dorms, fraternity houses and sorority houses that suffer fires are not equipped with sprinkler systems.

But although Cambridge fire codes only require sprinklers to be installed in buildings over 70 feet in height, almost all of Harvard's 400-plus structures have the technology in place.

Wong estimates, however, that only about a dozen University buildings still do not have sprinklers.

Were the University to only go as far as the building codes mandate, sprinklers would only be necessary in structures like Mather House, the Leverett House towers or Holyoke Center, all of which exceed six stories in height.

Harvard's Houses and dorms also benefit from being so short. With only two high-rise dormitories on campus--Mather and Leverett--Harvard students face significantly less risk of being trapped high in a burning building, a factor which may have contributed to the fatalities in the Seton Hall fire.

Location, Location, Location

In many respects, Harvard's location does more to ensure its safety than just about anything else.

Last summer, the nation's fire insurance industry named CFD an Insurance Services Office "Class One" department--a designation based on the department's structure and performance.

It is the only Massachusetts department to earn the rank, and one of only 33 in the nation.

And with one of the top fire departments in the nation responding to a portion of the University's 700-plus fire alarms each year, Harvard's fire safety programs have a leg up on other colleges.

After spending millions of dollars on recent upgrades to the University's fire suppression and warning systems, Harvard looks very safe, according to CFD.

"I don't see any deficiency at the University," says deputy chief Reardon.

But all of that--the sprinklers, the extinguishers, the alarms, and the CFD firefighters--doesn't matter if students ignore the warnings.

Not Stopping and Dropping

What many students don't realize, CFD officials say, is that if a real fire breaks out, they may have less than two minutes to evacuate a building before it becomes dangerous. Ignoring the alarms--or showing any hesitation at all in exiting--can prove deadly.

"The issue you can't control is people," Reardon says. "You can have the best fire alarm and prevention system...[but] what no one can dictate is human nature."

Even before the Seton Hall tragedy, members of the Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) told The Crimson they were having trouble convincing students to evacuate at every fire alarm.

And three weeks ago, when an explosion near Peabody Terrace necessitated the evacuation of the structure, their fears were realized when they had to go door-to-door to evacuate graduate student residents.

"Most students at universities are ambivalent [to fire alarms]," Reardon says.

Students who do not evacuate, can even be fined or arrested on the orders of the Cambridge fire chief.

Fines, which are set by the city, can run as high as $300 and are considerably higher than at other colleges. At the University of Michigan, for example--where a Jan. 21 fire caused extensive smoke damage to a dormitory--students are fined $50 if they do not evacuate.

"It's not like we're given any choice in the matter," says HUPD Sergeant James L. McCarthy. "[If] the [fire] chief tells us to arrest a student, we do."

Dean of Freshman Elizabeth Studley Nathans says her office takes fire alarms seriously--and students should too.

"Failure to [evacuate] is a serious matter, potentially endangering the lives not only of those who fail to comply, but of those whose duty it is to protect them," Nathans writes in an e-mail message.

And according to University officials, at least one upper-class student has been called to appear before the College's Administrative Board for failing to evacuate during a fire alarm.

It is an incident that college officials are trying to avoid repeating.

"[Fires] are a very serious business, and the results can be catastrophic," Reardon says.