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As students settle into living quarters on and off campus there’s so much think about — classes, homework, roommates, jobs, homesickness — that fire safety might get pushed the bottom of the list.

But the Nebraska state fire marshal’s office encourages students to keep safety in the forefront partly through the recognition of September as Campus Safety Month.

Though dorm fires are typically rare, they do happen and they have happened in Nebraska. On Nov. 17, 2006, a fire at a fraternity house on Nebraska Wesleyan’s campus in Lincoln took the life of 19-year-old Ryan Stewart of Ord. The cause of the fire hasn’t been determined.

The fraternity house wasn’t protected by fire sprinklers at the time.

According to Campus Firewatch, three students living in off-campus housing have died in fires in Nebraska since January 2000. During the 2006-07 academic year, one of those deaths was Stewart at Nebraska Wesleyan and the other two occurred in an off-campus fire and involved University of Nebraska-Lincoln students.

Since 2000, 94 people have lost their lives in campus-related fires in the U.S. Of those, 54 fires occurred in off-campus housing claiming the lives of 76 people, six of the fires were on-campus and claimed eight lives, and 10 people died is six fires in Greek housing, according to the Nebraska State Fire marshal’s office and the Center for Campus Fire Safety.

Of the 66 fires that were documented, 14 were intentional, 29 were accidental and the causes of 23 of the fires were never determined, according to the Center for Campus Fire Safety.

The number of reported fires in dorms increased 3 percent from 3,200 in 1980 to 3,300 in 2005. In comparison, structure fires of all types declined 52 percent from 1980 to 2005, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

To help keep those numbers down and to protect students, Hastings College, like many other higher education institutions, has a set of rules regarding what is and isn’t allowed in on-campus housing.

Ron Chesbrough, vice president for student affairs at Hastings College, said there are five dormitories and a six-building complex known as the Bronco Village Apartments on campus, and seven “honors houses” surrounding the campus. Approximately 800 of the college’s 1,150 students live in campus housing, a requirement for the first three years of school, he said.

The four-year-old apartments have sprinkler systems but only two of the other dorms do. Chesbrough said the sprinklers are being phased into the other residence halls at the rate of about one building a year. However, each residence hall is equipped with fire extinguishers and alarms, he said.

In his four years at Hastings College there hasn’t been a fire on campus, but there is an increased awareness of such fires in the college community nonetheless, he said.

According to the student handbook, nothing with an open flame is allowed in campus housing. Neither are wax warmers, halogen lamps, smoking materials, incense burners, hot plates, toasters, toaster ovens, electric grills, electric blankets, space heaters or Christmas lights.

To help freshman learn campus rules, a seven-week “living and learning” class is required. As part of that course, students go over the rules, code of conduct and safety measures of campus, he said.

Between 2002 and 2005, U.S. fire departments responded to an estimated average of 3,300 structure fires in dormitories, fraternity and sorority houses, and barracks. These fires caused an annual average of seven deaths, 46 injuries, and $25 million in property damage, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

Between 2002 and 2005, cooking equipment was involved in 72 percent of the reported dormitory fires. Heating equipment was listed as being involved in 2 percent of these fires and 2 percent were confined heating equipment fires. While smoking materials were the cause of only 2 percent of the fires, 40 percent of the deaths occurred in such fires. Likewise, candles caused 2 percent of the fires but led to 20 percent of the deaths, according to the National Fire Protection Association.

In 2005, the National Fire Protection Association reported that nationwide, more than 15,000 home fires, 150 deaths, 1,270 injuries and $539 million in property loss resulted from the improper use of candles.

Although Nebraska prohibits the use of candles in dorms, 66 percent of college students live off campus. Many students live in one- and two-family dwellings and apartment buildings, which places them in a high-risk category.

To help protect people, the state fire marshal’s office offers these tips: Extinguish all candles when leaving a room or going to sleep, keep candles away from things that can catch fire, place candles on stable furniture in sturdy holders, use globes to cover the flame, or use battery-powered flameless candles which are an acceptable option for use in dorms.

Having working smoke alarms and an emergency escape plan should be a priority for everyone, according to the National Fire Protection Association. The group suggests participating in all fire drills; leaving a building immediately upon hearing a fire alarm, closing doors as you go and taking your room keys; learning the locations of all the exits; and keeping a flashlight handy.

For students living off campus, the chances of being involved in a fire are higher than for those living on campus. According to Campus Firewatch, 80 percent of the campus-related fire fatalities across the country since January 2000 have occurred in off-campus housing. Four common factors in a number of the fires include a lack of automatic fire sprinklers, missing or disabled smoke alarms, careless disposal of smoking materials and impaired judgment due to alcohol consumption.

This weekend, the International Code Council will hold a final action hearing on a resolution supporting a change to the International Residential Code to require fire sprinklers in new single-family homes.

The IRC is the model code governing residential construction in 46 states plus the District of Columbia.

The hearing will be held sometime between Sept. 20 and 22 and will be a part of the ICC’s annual conference which will take place Sept. 14 to 23 in Minneapolis.

Earlier this year, ICC’s committee denied the proposal to require fire sprinklers in new single-family construction, meaning it will require two-thirds of the vote from its governmental members to overturn the committee and approve the code change.

While many codes currently mandate sprinklers in newly constructed townhomes and apartment buildings, proponents of the measure have found difficulty having new codes pass for single family homes.

“At some point, if we don’t take the action, we won’t have and inventory of homes” with fire sprinklers, IRC Fire Sprinkler Coalition Executive Director Jeffrey Shapiro said. “Just like you wouldn’t require old cars to go back and retrofit air bags, we can’t expect to do the same with single-family homes.”

Shapiro’s group — which lobbies for the installation of fire sprinklers in residential homes — has failed to have such a resolution approved in the pass, but in recent years it has continued to build momentum.

Two cycles ago, Shapiro said the resolution garnered 56 percent of the vote but failed to gain the required two-thirds vote. During the last cycle, the resolution was added to the appendix, and this year the group seeks to have it added to the code.

“There have been other proposals in previous cycles, but the last one garnered more attention than the previous ones,” Mike Pfeiffer, the Deputy Senior Vice President of the ICC, said, adding that he expects a strong turnout this time around.

Shapiro claims that the major opponent to the code requiring fire sprinklers has been the National Association of Home Builders and its local chapters.

“One argument has been that we would be putting people out of homes, making them less affordable,” Shapiro said. “But those people are already moving into (apartments and townhomes) outfitted with sprinklers”

NAHB spokeswoman Calli Schmidt contends that the organization is not opposed to fire sprinklers in single-family homes.

“What our members are opposed to are mandates — because the evidence is clear that they are not the right solution for every home,” she said in an e-mailed statement.

Schmidt said the organization believes that smokes alarms and better fire prevention efforts would be the most effective way to decrease the number of fire fatalities.

According to a recent report released by the Fire Protection Research Foundation, an affiliate of the National Fire Protection Association, the cost of installing sprinkler systems to the home builder averaged $1.61 per sprinklered square foot.

“More than 8 in 10 fire deaths occur in homes, yet the likelihood of someone dying in a home fire is cut in half when sprinklers are present,” Gary Keith, NFPA’s vice president of field operations, said in a statement. “Installing a home fire sprinkler system is a huge step in the right direction when protecting people and property.”

With over 2,000 members from more than 100 organizations spanning 43 states, according to Shapiro, the IRC Fire Sprinkler Coalition appears ready for its stiffest fight yet.

“We didn’t really make the outreach efforts in previous years that we have this year. We have a network we can communicate with now,” he said. “We’ve encouraged fire safety organizations across the country to attend the hearing.”

The Village Board recently passed an amendment to the Fire Prevention Code lowering the square footage requirement for sprinkler protection in new commercial structures and mandates residential sprinklers in new single-family homes.

The measure lowers the square footage requirement from 5,000 square feet to zero for commercial structures.

According to Fire Chief Robert Wilcox, residential sprinklers are a simple solution to lessen the possibility of deaths in the event of fire,

Sen. David Thomas, a Greenville County Republican who has long pushed for fire sprinklers to be required in some types of existing buildings, said he isn’t surprised that no local governments in the state have acted to match incentives for tax credits to install them.

A new law aimed at preventing fire tragedies requires local incentives to qualify for tax credits.

“That element of it was doomed from the beginning,” he said of the incentives. “They would lose money off of giving the credits. So clearly you’re not going to have municipalities doing that. The state is the only entity large enough with enough budget capacity to give tax credits of some kind.”

Others had no explanation.

Anderson County Council Chairman Michael Thompson said he hadn’t heard “any noise regarding sprinkler systems.”

Spartanburg County Council Chairman Jeffrey Horton said his council hasn’t discussed the issue and has no plans that he knows of. But he said he wasn’t familiar with the sprinkler law.

“I’m unaware of what you’re talking about,” he said.

Officials with the South Carolina Association of Counties and the South Carolina Municipal Association said they don’t know of any local government that has agreed to provide incentives.

Reba Campbell, a spokeswoman for the Municipal Association, said her organization has worked with some cities to craft a model ordinance in case some city councils want to offer the incentives.

“As far as I know, no one has done anything with it yet,” she said.

Under the law, property owners installing a fire sprinkler system when not required by law would be eligible for a property tax credit equal to 25 percent of the cost of the system, if the local government approves funding such incentives. If they do, the state would match the local tax credit with an income tax credit equal to 25 percent of the cost of the system.

The law, which took two years of hearings and debate, also limits utility fees for sprinkler systems to actual costs and permits churches to display live Christmas trees indoors.

Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed the bill, arguing the tax credits offered were large enough that they amounted to a subsidy.

Sanford also feared that the law could be challenged on constitutional grounds because not all property owners in the state would be treated the same, with some getting incentives based on what their local governments do and others unable to take advantage of the law. Legislators overrode his veto.

The legislation was filed as a result of several fire tragedies in the state in recent years, including a Greenville hotel fire that killed six, a furniture fire in Charleston that killed nine firefighters and a beach house fire in North Carolina last October that killed seven South Carolina college students.

Lawmakers debated whether to lean toward a carrot or a stick approach to the issue, either requiring sprinklers or granting incentives.

Thomas and others originally pushed for stronger legislation that would mandate sprinklers in some types of commercial buildings. Others advocated allowing local governments the ability to expand sprinkler requirements or grant greater tax credits.

The incentives bill, while much less than what sprinkler advocates wanted, was at least “something,” Thomas said. He said he plans to continue pushing for retrofitting buildings with sprinklers in the next legislative session.

“Maybe next year we will have another breakthrough,” he said. “You’re not going to get an omnibus bill that does everything. It’s going to come in bits and pieces.”

Sen. Danny Verdin, a Laurens Republican who led an effort in the Senate to craft the incentives, said if no local government passes any incentives by the time legislators return to Columbia, he will offer to collect the affected parties together again and “take another look at it.”