ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 29, 1996 TAG: 9611290128
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FARMVILLE
SOURCE: BILL BASKERVILL ASSOCIATED PRESS
"THERE ARE NO ANGELS 100 feet up,'' said one of the firefighters who would like to see sprinklers added before a disastrous fire.
A raging fire in Longwood College's towering twin dormitories could trap students in the top half of the buildings with no sprinklers to douse the blaze and fire ladders too short to rescue them.
Longwood's 10-story dorms are not unique. Virginia Tech, Radford University, Norfolk State, James Madison University, Hampton University and the University of Virginia have high-rise dorms without sprinklers in living areas. Radford, Longwood, Norfolk State and Virginia Tech lack access to fire ladders that can reach the top floors of their highest dorms.
``You've got 10-story buildings and there are no angels 100 feet up,'' said Grover Smiley, president of the Virginia Fire Prevention Association.
On top of that, the State Fire Marshal's Office has stopped routine inspections of college dormitories because of budget cuts, leaving the task largely to the colleges.
The 13 high-rise dorms house a total of 7,200 students, some of whom actually create hazards or vandalize smoke detectors and alarm systems. The best way to protect them from a towering inferno is sprinkler systems, the most reliable and tamper-resistant firefighters short of human ones, said Howard Summers Jr., the state fire marshal from 1979 to 1992.
``If you put them in now, you don't wait for that catastrophe to come along and say, `Why didn't we require this before?''' he said.
Except for Hampton, the problem high-rise dorms are all at state-supported schools. They lack sprinklers because they were built in the 1960s and '70s, when sprinklers weren't required. In 1991, the state mandated sprinklers in new dorms over four stories, but did not require them in existing dormitories.
It took catastrophes to get the state to outfit nursing homes and hospitals with sprinklers. In 1989, 12 people died in a fire at a Norfolk nursing home. On New Year's Eve 1994, a fire killed four patients at a Petersburg hospital.
The state fire marshal can recommend installation of sprinklers, as Summers did after a 1987 fire in one of Longwood's high-rises, but he cannot order them installed in dorms built before 1991.
``When we have a front yard full of bodies, we'll ask why we didn't do this,'' said Smiley, whose fire prevention group is made up of fire safety officials across the state.
Summers said automatic sprinkler systems are vital in high-rise dorms, which house more students and take longer to evacuate than smaller buildings. And the difference between sprinkler systems and smoke detectors with central alarms can be the difference between life and death, he said.
``A smoke alarm wakes you up and says `Five minutes from now you are going to die.' A sprinkler wakes you up and says `I'm going to wet you down but you're going to live.'''
A fire safety specialist's recent unannounced visit to Longwood's Frazer and Curry dorms - each housing 450 students - turned up a number of code violations:
* A fire exit was locked.
* Firewall doors on an enclosed breezeway connecting the buildings were chocked open with chairs.
* Stairway doors were warped, wouldn't latch completely or had holes in them.
* Flammable Halloween decorations were hung throughout both buildings.
Compounding the problem is the fact that the Farmville Fire Department's ladder truck - purchased by the college - can reach only as high as the sixth floor of the 10-story towers.
How would students on upper floors reach safety if smoke blocked stairwell escapes? Farmville assistant Fire Chief Al Mason was asked. ``We just hope it don't get that high, but it could,'' he replied.
Smiley, chief of building and life safety for the Charlottesville Fire Department, warned his own son about the danger of the Longwood dorms when he sent him to college there in the 1980s. ``I told him he could not move above the fourth floor or it will kill you.''
Longwood spokesman Dennis Sercombe said Frazer and Curry's concrete and reinforced steel construction keeps fire from spreading, and that was one of the reasons sprinklers haven't been installed.
Dorms are a high fire risk because of the large amount of combustible materials students own and student misuse of electrical equipment, according to a report the State Fire Marshal's Office issued in May.
State fire officials said they were unaware of any other states that have required colleges to retrofit high-rise dormitories with sprinklers.
Virginia requires smoke detectors and alarm systems in all college dorms. Longwood's high-rises have fire alarm activators on every floor, but tripping the alarms is a common prank, said sophomore Phil Adams of Mechanicsville.
``It's mostly a drunk person running around to be funny in the middle of the night,'' said Adams, 19. It became so commonplace that few students take the alarms seriously and leave the building, he said.
In the 1987 fire in Frazer that injured 16 students, the central alarm did not work when it was pulled on several floors. Some students said a prankster had tripped it two weeks earlier and it had not been reset.
Curry caught fire in 1991, but no one was injured.
Norfolk State's 11-story Twin Towers were the scene of a 1989 fire that produced a lot of smoke but didn't injure anyone. When Summers inspected it recently, he found tripped fire alarms, numerous vandalized exit signs and a missing fire extinguisher on one floor.
Summers also found that a first-floor stairwell door had been jammed open despite a sign bearing a fire marshal's warning to keep the door ``closed at all times.''
During a fire, those open doors can turn stairwells into chimneys, Smiley said.
Roberteau D. Harris, coordinator of environmental health and safety at Norfolk State, noted all of the problems during the tour and said they would be fixed. ``I didn't like the condition my dorm was in,'' he said.
Sprinkler systems cost more than alarms. At an estimated rate of $2.50 per square foot, it would run about $450,000 to retrofit both Longwood high-rises with sprinklers.
``Retrofit is costly, but not as costly as lives,'' said Summers.
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