“I think this is the right thing to do, but I don’t like the way this is written at all … I really think we need to take a look at this and do it right,” councilman Bob Blackburn said.
Oxford’s building code requires that smoke detectors be hard-wired into residential structures rather than battery-operated units that were easy to disable, said Jung-Han Chen, the city’s director of development. The current code specifies smoke detectors, but does not require a specific type.
Resident Doug Turnbull had a daughter, Julie, who died, along with two other students, in a fire off-campus in 2005. That made him “kind of a reluctant expert on smoke detectors … (those) kids would be alive today if there’d been a different type of smoke detector in the house,” he said.
There are two basic types of smoke detectors: older units that work by ionization technology and newer units that use photo-electric sensors, with the latter being much more reliable, Turnbull said.
“Statistically, it probably will not save you from a fire,” Turnbull said of the ionization units. “There’s a 56 percent chance it will not alarm, because of disabling and because they frankly don’t work in all fire situations.
Another resident, Dean Dennis, also had a daughter who died in a fire off-campus. He has worked with other city councils to pass similar legislation and said the Ohio Fire Chief’s Association recommends photo-electric units.
Jenny Levering, the director of fraternity and sorority life at Miami University, said that last year the campus acquired 1,000 detectors, noting that many houses already have at least one.
“We can’t always protect (the students), but this is a step in the right direction,” she said.
Chen said the resolution to come back requiring photo-electric detectors, but it would also give building owners up to three years to install them if ionization unites were already in place. In the meantime, the code would allow battery-operated phot0-electric detectors to ensure safety.
“It’s the right thing to do, don’t get me wrong. But it’s the right thing to do right,” Blackburn said.
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