Thursday, 4:30 PM
College campuses to step up fire prevention awareness
By Marcella Bombardieri, Globe Staff
After two off-campus apartment fires left three students dead, Boston University officials are pledging to beef up education on fire safety with e-mails, fliers, and a new website.
"It is ... important that we not retreat to business as usual when it comes to matters of personal safety," President Robert A. Brown and dean of students Kenneth Elmore wrote in an e-mail to students Sunday. "It is true that the recent fires were accidental; however, we should increase our collective obligation to do what we can to avoid similar tragedies in the future."
BU also is doing an extra round of inspection of campus buildings to make sure fire safety systems are in order.
Officials at several other area colleges, including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, and Wentworth Institute of Technology, have sent fire-prevention reminders to students or resident advisers since the fatal fire last month.
A national group, Campus Firewatch, says at least 19 fire fatalities have occurred across the country this academic year in off-campus student residences or privately owned fraternities. That is the highest number of fire deaths on campuses or involving student residences since the group began tracking media reports in 2000. Eighty percent of college-related fire deaths occur in off-campus housing, the group says.
Boston and Brookline officials said that they view two fires near BU within weeks of each other as a tragic coincidence, and that they do not generally have more problems with student apartments than other residences.
On Feb. 24, two BU students, Rhiannon McCuish, a 21-year-old from Mashpee, and Stephen Adelipour, a 21-year-old from Great Neck, N.Y., were killed in a fire in an apartment on Aberdeen Street in Boston. Another student was seriously injured. The blaze was started by a burning candle, apparently lit after the building lost power.
On Friday, just two blocks away, on St. Mary’s Street in Brookline, a fire killed Derek Crowl, a 19-year-old student from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, who was visiting a friend at BU during his spring break. Investigators believe the fire started after hot embers from a charcoal grill on the back porch smoldered on the wooden deck and a couch before bursting into flames about 6 a.m.
Brookline prohibits residents from using grills on porches.
