Elysha Bitterman was watching “Almost Famous” early in the morning when the fire alarm in her dorm room went off. She wasn’t sure if it was a real fire and ended up waiting 15 minutes for the resident assistants in her building to come to her first floor room and tell her to leave.

She ended up standing outside in the freezing cold for a false alarm. “It creates such commotion,” said Bitterman, 18. “There’s a lot of chaos. It’s a pain in the ass.”

In her first semester at SF State, Bitterman has experienced two fire alarms in her building. While pretty much all the alarms are false ones, it shows how effective the alarms on campus are.

Between Aug. 31 and Sept. 19, there were 24 fire alarms, according to the media log available in the SF State Police Department.

Two came from Mary Park Hall, 13 came from Centennial Village and four came from University Park North. Causes of the alarm included burnt food, burnt dishes, cigarette smoke, shower steam and construction dust.

“Fire is an issue we take seriously. We do not allow activity within any of the residence halls that increases the potential for fire; no candles, no smoking, no incense,” said Margaret Rothe, area coordinator at the Towers at Centennial Square & Science and Technology Themed community housing and residential services.

Rothe said there were no false alarms.

“What may be called ‘false’ to one constituency is practice for our residents to learn to evacuate quickly,” she said.

There are 420 residents each in Mary Park and Mary Ward, 100 in Science & Technology, 550 in Towers at Centennial Square, 760 in three buildings in the Village Centennial Square, according to Rothe.

“[The fire alarms] are too sensitive. The beeping is very annoying,” said Tara Maynard, 18, who lives in Mary Park Hall.

While Bitterman and Maynard have only experienced the false alarms a couple of times, the alarms need to have their sensitivity changed, they said.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) issued a warning about the increase in dorm fires. In 1998 there were 1,800 fires while the number of dorm fires increased to 3,300 in 2005, according to the CPSC. From 2000 through 2005 there were 39 deaths and nearly 400 injuries.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) reported that dorm fires are more likely to happen between 5 p.m. and 11 p.m., as well as on the weekends.

Both organizations said that cooking in dorm rooms causes the most amount of fires.
Rothe said that a fire safety learning module is mandatory for anyone found smoking or having candles or incense in the dorms. It is also possible for a resident to be evicted from the dorms if to be found tampering with the fire alarm equipment.

October is “Disaster Preparedness Month,” Rothe said. Students will be getting info regarding fire, first aid basics and earthquakes.

Rothe also had advice to help students.

“Try to keep an eye on your food,” she said. “Popcorn only takes very few minutes to cook.”

While Maynard knows students are going to bring things like microwave ovens into their dorms when they shouldn’t, she said that the students should not have to suffer over false alarms.

“It’s our room,” she said. “If we want a fire alarm [in there], it’s our decision.”