Family, Friends of Ocean Isle Fire Victims In DC Pushing For Sprinklers

WASHINGTON—Ashley Perdue was lucky to escape from a raging fire in a beach house on the North Carolina coast last year.

Many of her friends were not. Seven students from the University of South Carolina and Clemson University were killed in the blaze at Ocean Isle Beach, N.C., in October 2007.

With the memory of her friends’ deaths still fresh, Perdue joined dozens of college students from South Carolina and North Carolina who traveled to Washington Tuesday to lobby Congress to strengthen campus fire safety regulations.

“They were seven wonderful, genuine people who should be with us today. Because there weren’t any sprinkler systems in the house, they aren’t here,” said Perdue, a junior at USC from Florence, S.C.

Several high-profile college fires have claimed more than 120 lives over the last decade. Last month, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation to force universities to better document campus fire-prevention measures, including a detailed accounting of sprinkler systems in on-campus housing, called the “Campus Fire Safety Right-to-Know Act.”

But four of five of those campus fire deaths occurred off-campus, according to Campus Firewatch, a newsletter that covers campus fire safety issues.

Another bill currently pending in Congress, the Fire Sprinkler Incentive Act, would give bigger tax breaks to universities and private landlords that retrofit older buildings with sprinkler systems, both on campus and off.

Still, neither bill contained provisions that would have affected a privately owned beach house not near a campus, like the house in Ocean Isle Beach.

In addition to lobbying Congress, students said Tuesday’s trip was intended to raise awareness for fire safety and prevention on college campuses.

Every student should know how to react if caught in a blaze like the fire at Ocean Isle Beach, they said.

“That’s why education is really key – students knowing what to do in the situation they’re in,” said Ed Comeau, publisher of Campus Firewatch, who met with students on Tuesday.

Some states have been more aggressive than others at requiring sprinkler systems in student housing, Comeau said, leading to a “real patchwork” of regulations in different states.

“If you put up a new dorm today, it has to be sprinklered. But in some states, there are still a lot of old buildings that need to be retrofitted,” he said.

Kaaren Mann, of Greenville, S.C., lost a daughter, Lauren Mahon, a USC student, in the Ocean Isle Beach blaze, and helped lobby for new sprinkler legislation in South Carolina. She joined the students – including some of her daughter’s friends – in Washington Tuesday to press Congress to pass the sprinkler legislation.

“Ideally, I’d like to see fire sprinklers as common as seatbelts,” she said.

The students met with several members of Congress, including Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., to push for the sprinkler law and thanked them for passing the “Right to Know” Act.

Last year, Clyburn told the students, “we mourned the lives – and the future promise they had – that were cut short in such a dramatic way. Today, we can see the legacy of their lives in this room.”