Some students may groan when somebody triggers a 3 a.m. fire alarm in their building, but the Madison Fire Department is urging all students to take extra precaution and care when dealing with fire safety issues.

In light of Fire Prevention Week and the Sept. 7 fire in Fitchburg, where an apartment building was burned to the ground, students may find fire safety awareness around campus advantageous.

One of the biggest problems for firefighters during the Fitchburg fire was an inability to determine where residents were and if they had safely exited the building.

Similarly, most apartment buildings and off-campus homes have no meeting place or evacuation plan in the event of a fire. This factor contributes to some serious problems during a fire where life and death issues are at stake, Lori Worth-Hammer of the Madison Fire Department said.

Since January 2000, 51 students have died in off-campus fires across the nation, a number representing 80 percent of student fire fatalities, according to a Madison Fire Department release.

“The University works at an evacuation plan and pushes the residents to get out in an emergency, but many off-campus residences don’t have escape plans,” Worth-Hammer said. “Then how do you make sure everyone is accounted for?”

The influx of students, as well as the nature of off-campus housing, creates a difficult atmosphere to track down residents, she added.

University of Wisconsin sophomore Adam Thiel lives in the off-campus apartment complex of Le Ville. According to the MFD, 81 percent of fires occurred in such apartments since January 2000. After several false fire alarm experiences in the residence halls, Thiel said he thinks twice before acknowledging fire alarms.

“If an alarm went off tonight, I would definitely think about it and, in the end, I probably would get up,” Thiel admitted. “But, if I was still in the dorm and the alarm went off, I would absolutely not get up. It’s just drunk people screwing around with the alarms.”

But the fire department urges all residents to get up and out during any alarm and not to block exits.

“When you disable or ignore a fire alarm, you make it a life and death situation,” Worth-Hammer said. “Maybe there isn’t a fire that time, but don’t bank on it. People think they can battle small fires.”

A simple wastebasket fire can engulf an entire room in flames and smoke within four minutes, according to the MFD. Extinguishers are effective only on small fires if detected early.

“For a number of reasons, smoke alarms are disabled or ignored, and some of the fatalities are a direct results of hearing an alarm and ignoring it,” Worth-Hammer said. “It is absolutely critical that when you hear it, you treat it as a real fire.”

Smoke inhalation is the number one cause of fatalities because it is a quiet killer. If alarms are disabled and residents are sleeping, smoke inhalation could simply knock a person unconscious.

“You’re probably going to die,” Worth-Hammer said. “That’s the simple, hard truth.”

To be better prepared, the MFD recommends students close their doors when they are asleep. Closed doors slow down the rush of smoke into a room and will buy a resident time to determine a proper escape or call for help.

Typically, in off-campus housing, unattended cooking can cause late night fires. Students may begin cooking but fall asleep or forget. Similarly, candles have sparked a growing amount of fires.

“The fires last year with the most costly damaged were started by candles,” Worth-Hammer said. “They lit drapes and bedding on fire because they tipped over or burned down.”

The number of tenants with complaints regarding fire safety issues is generally low at the Tenant Resource Center, Campus Coordinator Cynthia Campost said.

If there are problems in residences, the TRC can employ a housing inspector to come into the building and make a proper assessment.

Some of the safety issues concern old wiring or outlets that emit shocks, Campost said. A housing inspector can detect the problem and force the landlord to fix the possible safety issue. If the problem is not fixed, the housing inspector can distribute fines to the landlord.

Students generally deal with smaller cases of fire safety. Thiel’s first incident occurred when residue left behind from oven cleaning created a large amount of smoke when he cooked a pizza.

The second incidence was when one of his roommates left a burner on after he had finished cooking. Although the burner was on for approximately 10 minutes, Thiel admitted that a mistake like that could have started a small blaze.

“The oven cleaning incident and the burner are the only two things that could have been dangerous,” Thiel said. “But we caught them right away. We are making sure nothing burns down or catches on fire near the stove.”

Some of the most common features in off-campus fires involved alcohol, missing or disabled fire alarms, a lack of automatic fire sprinkler systems and careless disposal of smoking materials, according to the Center for Campus Fire Safety.