Campus fires are not issues schools take lightly. In 2007, seven individuals died in fires in student housing nationwide. One occurred in Illinois at Bradley University, where an Aug. 12 prank involving alcohol and explosives cost one student his life.

Since 2000, 101 students have perished in campus-related blazes.

But Northwestern doesn’t play with fire, at least according to the Princeton Review’s fire safety ratings.

On a scale of 61 to 99, NU earned a score of 98, making it the safest school in the Big Ten and one of the safest schools in the state.

It’s come a long way since 1979, when Evanston officials threatened to take the university to court over what The Chicago Tribune called “scores” of fire code violations.

The change is a consequence of actions by both the city and the university to improve student safety – a program that Garth Miller, director of university housing and food services, estimated has cost more than $20 million.

NU’s rating is impressive, said Mike Halligan, president of the Center for Campus Fire Safety in Newburyport, Mass.

“What a school with a 98 tells me … is that Northwestern is doing a pretty good job of building in fire safety features into their buildings and doing a tremendous amount of effort to try and reach out to students to promote fire safety as well,” he said.

NU’s score falls within the top 5 percent of schools that submitted data nationwide, said Ben Zelevansky, the director of data collection at the Princeton Review.

“A 99 is the best rating, so basically there aren’t a ton of schools with a 99,” Zelevansky said.

The Princeton Review began measuring fire safety three years ago, Zelevansky said. Its rating is a measure of how prepared an institution is to prevent campus fires and how efficiently it would respond if one occurred. Factors such as malicious and unwanted fire alarms, the percentage of student housing equipped with smoke detectors and automated fire sprinkler systems, and the banning of certain hazardous items and activities are all taken into consideration.

“Currently all residence halls are equipped with sprinklers and are covered by both building fire alarm systems as well as in-room smoke detectors with battery back up,” Miller said in an e-mail. “Several Greek units have also completed this work, and others are currently working to come into compliance with the city regulations.”

NU also holds quarterly fire drills, swaps out batteries in smoke detectors each year and tests the system regularly, Miller said.

Evanston Fire Chief Alan Berkowsky said Northwestern’s high fire safety rating has to do with strict code enforcement, as well as city ordinances requiring fire protection.

“One of the ordinances in particular deals with the retrofit of existing dorms, fraternities and sororities with sprinkler systems,” he said.

Two years ago, Evanston enacted an ordinance requiring all undergraduate, graduate and Greek housing to have automated sprinkler systems, Berkowsky said.

“Northwestern has done a great job of getting these systems installed, which was a major undertaking,” he said. “Northwestern was actually complying with it before we actually got it on the books.”

Berkowsky said about 90 percent of Northwestern’s living units currently have automated sprinkler systems.

“When you have sprinklers in almost all of your dormitories, that’s a significant level of protection these other colleges don’t have,” Berkowsky said, adding that he is not surprised NU has a higher rating than other Chicago schools. “I mean, when you look at college fatalities in residential halls, it’s due to buildings that don’t have sprinkler systems.”

Adding fire sprinklers to buildings can raise a school’s fire safety rating, Halligan said, but Zelevansky said he could not comment on the specifics of the formula.

If the ratings had been around in 1990, the result could have been quite different.

That year, when Berkowsky started as a fire inspector in Evanston, one of his first inspections was of an NU fraternity. After walking to the third floor, he said he found an exit sign on a dead-end hallway.

“The fraternity guy goes, ‘I just reach on top of the exit sign, grab a key, open the dorm room’s door and go out the window,’ ” Berkowsky said. “That’s where we were, and now we’re so far from that point it’s really comforting to know how well Northwestern is doing in the area of fire safety.”

In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, NU had two fires on campus with property loss totaling $95,000. The most damage occurred in a November fire in an Evans Scholars’ dorm room at 721 University Pl.

The last major fire to occur in a campus residence hall was on Feb. 23, 1914, when Heck Hall was completely destroyed. The building, which was the first to be constructed at NU, was located where Deering Library now stands. At the time, The Daily called it “the most spectacular blaze that Evanston has ever seen.”

Despite displacing 100 lodgers, there were no fatalities. University assistant archivist Kevin Leonard said he has no knowledge of any deadly fires on campus.

While NU buildings are safer now than ever before, fires can still happen, said Chris Johnson, NU’s director of risk management.

“But the most important thing we consider, and we certainly think the sprinklers and the like are very important, but the human element is the most important thing in preventing fires,” he said. “It’s getting the thought among people that there are certain things they can and can’t do, some of which are very dangerous and could possibly cause fires.”

But that does not always happen. Police officers and firefighters often find students lingering in the dorms after an alarm has sounded. Johnson said, but there is no disciplinary action takes place unless those students disobey orders to leave.

“The most positive influence on a student is peer pressure,” he said. “This is serious stuff. The last thing anybody wants to see is anyone get hurt in a fire or any other emergency.”

Miller said students who do not comply with evacuations are referred to Residential Life.

“It’s just the perception of college students and that age group, they just don’t perceive fire as a danger,” Berkowsky said.

Reach Tommy Giglio at [email protected].