As the rest of campus spent their early morning hours resting, residents of the Kappa Sig house were awakened by a screeching fire alarm on Nov. 6.

“We had no idea what was going on. I opened the door to our common room and it stunk,” said resident Jordan Reisenweber. “We all went outside until the fire department came and ended up staying outside until six in the morning.”

“The fire resulted from an electrical problem in the heating unit in the attic,” said University Park Fire Marshall, Carl McMurphy. “They think it had been going for a while, but it was confined to two rooms so four boys were affected.” There were no casualties.

The recent fire and the upcoming holiday season have increased concern about fire safety on campus.

“Our house is 40 years old and many other buildings on campus are old too and not up to date with fire codes,” said Reisenweber.

University Park Fire Department officials say fire codes are continually changing and new codes are regularly adopted. In order to stay current, departments must adopt the newest code. This is standard for the state of Texas and SMU falls under University Park’s fire code regulations.

“In the past four to five years the fire codes have changed three times,” said Floyd Phelps, SMU fire safety coordinator. SMU is currently under the 2000 edition of the international fire code.

With many old buildings on campus it is difficult to meet the constant changing fire codes.

“According to the code every building that is built now in University Park or on campus has to have a fire alarm and be sprinkled,” said Phelps. “Our main concern is for the residence halls. We have plans to sprinkle two of them this summer.”

Boaz, Shuttles, Mary Hay and Peyton Halls still need to be remodeled with a sprinkler system, as well as the Kappa Sig and Beta houses, which are owned by SMU. “When most of the Greek houses were built, codes were much different,” McMurphy said. “Some of the houses are over 30 years old and there have definitely been changes since then. Now, as they start to get remodeled they are required by city ordinances to bring them up to code.”

According to Phelps, plans are in place to get all of SMU’s buildings up to current fire codes.

“We do have several buildings that don’t have sprinklers or alarms, like Dallas Hall which is a historical landmark over 80 years old,” said Phelps. “We just finished sprinkling McFarlin auditorium this summer and have a plan in place to have all the buildings sprinkled over an extended period of time.”

According to McMurphy, 1700 actual fires occur on college campus each year and SMU and University Park are taking steps towards informing staff and students about fire safety. At the beginning of the semester University Park put on The Great Escape, which creates an atmosphere where staff and students encounter a fire and must get out of the house. The number of participants this year doubled last year’s attendance.

“I’d like to see a lot more people participate because people do not realize how fast their environment will change,” McMurphy said. “It is probably the most realistic thing we can do on campus. I hope it continues to grow as fast as it did from our first year to our second year.”

With the holiday season approaching, SMU has also posted guidelines on the Web site regarding how to decorate safely.

“Our next step will be to get all our buildings up to date,” said Phelps. “Students just need to incorporate fire safety in their daily living.”