U.S. Representative Ed Whitfield (KY-01) helped push legislation through the House of Representatives yesterday which will improve fire safety on college and university campuses across the country.

“Far too many of our nation’s young people have been lost to senseless fire tragedies at places where they are supposed to be encouraged to grow and kept safe – their own college campuses,” Whitfield said. “I was pleased to work with the late Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) on this important legislation which will save lives and make student housing in Kentucky, and across the country, safer.”

Whitfield supported, and the House passed, H.R. 642, the Honorable Stephanie Tubbs Jones College Fire Prevention Act. Whitfield was the lead Republican sponsor of the legislation, which he helped draft with the late Representative Tubbs Jones. The Congresswoman died unexpectedly last month and the bill she authored with Whitfield was renamed in her honor.

The legislation will establish an incentive program within the Department of Energy to promote the installation of fire sprinkler systems, and other fire suppression or prevention technologies, in student housing and dormitories. Grants will be awarded on a competitive basis to colleges and universities, as well as eligible sororities and fraternities, to provide technologically advanced fire safety equipment in various student housing units.

Since January 2000, 94 people have been killed in sixty-six separate campus related fires. Nearly 80 percent of these fire fatalities have occurred in off-campus occupancies such as rented houses and apartments within three miles of the campus. Common factors in a number of these fires included lack of automatic sprinklers, disabled smoke alarms, careless disposal of smoking materials and alcohol consumption.

Whitfield is encouraging Kentucky students to take an active role in preventing fires in their dormitories and apartments by making sure they have a working smoke alarm, a fire escape ladder for upper floor apartments and a fire extinguisher in the kitchen. The Congressman notes that it is also important for students to have their furnace inspected every year and to ensure that their apartment building has a Carbon Monoxide detector.