AMHERST — Three college students living in a downtown off-campus rental will each be fined $100 for disabling the smoke detectors in their home after a fire broke out on their stove early Friday, according to Fire Chief Lindsay Stromgren.
The fire started around 5:30 a.m. when an unattended pizza box caught fire, filling the Smith Street home with smoke. Police officers were the first to arrive and evacuated two of the three occupants, who were still in bed. There were no injuries.
When firefighters arrived, they found the smoke detectors had been disabled.
Stromgren said tenants disabling detectors is not unusual.
“Off-campus, unfortunately, we do find disabled detectors quite a bit,” he said.
Without working smoke detectors, occupants get no early warning of a fire, Stromgren said, which poses a significant threat.
“If people are asleep, it’s been known for decades that they won’t be woken up by smoke,” he said.
Disabled or disconnected detectors are usually discovered only when police or firefighters respond to an emergency call, or when municipal inspectors visit a property because of a complaint, Stromgren said.
The town has a rental inspection program to make sure homes are in working condition. The University of Massachusetts inspects its dormitories twice a year, and fraternity and sorority houses are also inspected regularly.
In this case, the landlord was cooperative, Stromgren said.
“The landlord has gotten them replaced and working again,” he said.
Each occupant was fined because disabled detectors were found in both the common areas and the bedrooms, Stromgren said.
Nonfunctioning smoke detectors are rare in UMass dorms, Stromgren said, though students occasionally try to cover them with plastic bags. Most on-campus detectors are connected to a larger system that sends an alert if one is disconnected.
Across the country each year there are 15,000 fires in off-campus college housing, according to the Amherst Fire Department.
