Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Kate Rath, a communications major at the University of Pittsburgh, talks about problems with her apartment at 331 McKee Place in Oakland. Click photo for larger image. MORE ON THE STORY City, Pitt both increase effort to oversee housing

University of Pittsburgh sophomore Kate Rath's Central Oakland apartment building has been cited for mysterious gas odors, insufficient smoke detectors, doors with inadequate fire resistance, windows that don't open and piles of junk under the fire escape -- all since October.

Even though her student-heavy neighborhood has seen two fatal fires since July and has been the focus of a housing code enforcement blitz, getting her landlord to fix even some of the problems has taken prodding by the city and the county Health Department.

She said a smoke detector, mounted between two bedrooms, its face plate jammed, did not tweet when tested, and it had her particularly worried.

"That's pretty scary," she said. "That's not comforting. I'm kind of paranoid about that right now."

The problems found in her building at 331 McKee Place, which is owned by Elrod Investments, fit a pattern across Central Oakland's student apartments, where living near campus but outside university supervision entails a certain risk of getting burned.

City inspectors swept the neighborhood in August and vowed stronger enforcement following a June 18 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story that documented dilapidated conditions in the neighborhood. But often their efforts get no further than the front door. Unlike college towns such as State College and Morgantown, W.Va., which require regular inspections of rental properties, Pittsburgh doesn't have a law that gives inspectors the power to look for indoor violations without an invitation from the tenant or landlord.

The August sweep by city inspectors found 44 buildings for which required engineering tests for fire escape safety had not been done.

When inspectors did get in, some of their findings were disturbing. Of the 16 structures they were invited to enter, 13 failed to meet requirements for smoke detectors, 12 had inadequate fire doors, and others fell short of standards regarding fire extinguishers and hall lighting.

Fires speed compliance
Since then, some Oakland landlords have rushed to comply with the rules. Student-tenants report recent installation of smoke detectors, repairs to aging fire escapes, or installation of new doors. Other landlords face enforcement efforts through Housing Court.

City inspectors in August entered 3420 Louisa St., finding smoke detectors, emergency lighting, fire doors and fire extinguishers that were not adequate, and a fire escape that needed immediate repairs. Landlord New Oakland Housing was promptly told of the violations, and by Oct. 11 repairs were under way, according to building inspection files.

On Nov. 4, the building burned. The blaze trapped Richard Noble, 20, a Pitt student from Burgettstown, who died Nov. 17 of injuries sustained in the fire.

The subsequent investigation found that the fire-related code violations had been addressed, perhaps preventing more tragedy. "It did have smoke detectors," said city Fire Chief Michael Huss, looking over the investigation report, which found the fire to be accidental, possibly electrical in nature. "It did have emergency lighting. It did have a fire escape.

"We did have other people who successfully evacuated the building," he said. Improvements made as a result of the sweep "may have helped those others get out."

That wasn't the only New Oakland Housing location with fire-related violations. The Philadelphia-based partnership owns 15 apartment buildings along McKee and Louisa, making it among Central Oakland's biggest landlords.

After the August sweep and subsequent inspections, city inspectors notified New Oakland Housing of violations in 11 of its buildings, including fire safety issues in seven.

Six buildings had insufficient smoke detectors and lacked fire-resistant doors. Two needed more fire extinguishers.

Six had fire escapes that hadn't been reviewed by engineers, as city code requires, including two escapes characterized as in need of "immediate repair" and two that needed to be replaced within a year, according to subsequent engineers' reports commissioned by the landlord in September.

New Oakland Housing would not address questions about building conditions. Jon Goodman, an executive with the firm's Philadelphia-based parent company, referred questions to the local office. A manager there said she "was told by my home office that if you need any information whatsoever, it can be found in public records."

Mr. Noble's death followed by four months that of Mario El Nimri, a 20-year-old restaurant worker, after he became trapped on the third floor of a three story rental house at 307 Meyran Ave. and died of smoke inhalation.

The fire investigation has not been officially closed, said Chief Huss. The dwelling appeared to meet building codes, except that it was missing a required door between the first and second floors, which could have slowed the spread of the fire and smoke from the ground level.

"The occupants were alerted by the smoke alarms," Chief Huss said. It appeared that Mr. El Nimri tried to flee his third-floor room but may have been overcome by smoke before making it to the window, which was served by a fire escape.

Tougher rules elsewhere
Given the stakes, some university towns leave less to chance when it comes to detecting potentially life-threatening conditions in student housing.

For nearly three decades, the towns surrounding Penn State University, including State College, have required that all rental properties including student housing be inspected for building code and fire safety issues on average every three years. Those communities enacted even stricter rules requiring interconnected smoke detectors in all rental structures regardless of their age following the death last year of a Penn State student in a fire off campus.

Likewise, all rentals in Morgantown, W.Va., are inspected inside and out at least once every three years, the city says. It's been that way since passage of a 1979 referendum that followed the deaths of three female WVU students in an off-campus fire, said Mike Stone, the city's code enforcement chief.

He said inspectors regularly find instances of landlord neglect and hazards created by tenants -- including intentionally disabled smoke alarms, exits blocked by air conditioners or refrigerators, and extra tenants illegally sharing rent. But it would be far worse without the regular inspections "because no one would be watching the hen house," he said.

"The more often you're there, the more often the owner is there, and they do make corrections because they don't want a violation and they don't want their tenants complaining to us," said Tim Knisley, senior fire and housing inspector for the Centre Region Code Administration in State College.

Nationwide, at least 92 students, parents and others have perished in student housing fires since 2000, according to the Center for Campus Fire Safety, a non-profit group in Belchertown, Mass. Pennsylvania, with seven deaths, is tied with Indiana for the third-highest body count after Ohio and North Carolina.

By far, the biggest problem lies off campus, where two-thirds of the nation's 17 million college students reside, said the center's director, Ed Comeau. Fires in off-campus housing accounted for 78 percent of the fatal fires during that period.

Lack of sprinklers, missing or disabled smoke alarms, careless disposal of smoking material and alcohol consumption show up over and over in those blazes, Mr. Comeau said.

So do the presence of sofas and other indoor furniture left outside, a common sight in Central Oakland. In just one block of Atwood Street, five of the homes had upholstered furniture on their front porches last week.

Often, students hunting for apartments "don't know what to look for" when it comes to fire risk, Mr. Comeau said. Nor do they stop to think that "for the price of a pizza" buying a battery powered smoke alarm could save their lives.

In Pittsburgh, it's the landlord's responsibility to ensure that a rental unit has working smoke detectors on the day a new tenant moves in. In Central Oakland, though, that's not always the case.

Local court testimony indicates that tenants at 430 Atwood St. had to repeatedly beg for smoke detectors before landlord Elrod Investments, also Ms. Rath's landlord, installed them.

Health Department inspections of 430 Atwood, conducted in November, found exposed wires, missing junction boxes, a lack of ground fault circuit interrupters on bathroom power outlets, a broken panel door on the breaker box, and an often-inoperable boiler that forced tenants to resort to landlord-provided space heaters. A city building inspector found that emergency lights were missing or not working.

District Judge Gene Ricciardi, in a hearing on a case between Elrod and upset tenants, said the reports showed "the potential of a life-threatening condition" and said it appeared the company's agent "knowingly, recklessly, and possibly dangerously leased an apartment."

Elrod owner Jason Cohen, a 25-year-old Mt. Lebanon resident whose portfolio includes around 30 local properties, noted that he bought the Oakland buildings just two years ago. "These buildings were dilapidated," he said. "They were a mess."

He said the company has addressed problems when it has become aware of them, via tenant complaints or official inspections. "If you go into any apartment in Pittsburgh, nine times out of 10, you can find issues," he said. "If nobody mentions it, we don't necessarily know about it."

The recent inspections of his Oakland holdings have resulted in a slew of repairs, he said. "It was a matter of somebody coming in and saying, 'This is what's wrong,' " he said. "We have a clean bill of health from the Health Department now."

In fact, inspections in the last two weeks by both the Health Department and city inspectors have found continuing violations in his buildings, though the most serious -- failed boilers, gas smells -- have been addressed.

Mr. Cohen's leases come with a list of "rules and regulations." Among them: "Tenant must pay an initial charge of $15.00 (unless waived by leasing agent) for the installation and use of 1 smoke detector for the first year of the Lease Term."

"According to these rules and regulations, we can charge that," said Mr. Cohen. "I can assure you, nobody has paid that."

"That's not something they should be paying for," said city Building Inspection Chief Graziano. "They shouldn't sign a lease if there's not a working smoke detector."

Non-working detectors
There must be one detector in each bedroom, and one in every common area, like a living room, he said.

"I believe most of the apartments have smoke detectors," Chief Graziano said. "Whether they're working or not, I wouldn't venture a guess."

Interviews with students suggest that compliance is inconsistent.

One student tenant of an Atwood Street property, who asked not to have her name published, said her landlord left three smoke alarms in a closet, where they have remained. She dug out one partly assembled, ancient-looking unit, which appeared not to work.

Landlords said that their best efforts to improve safety often are undone by the students themselves, who sabotage smoke detectors by removing batteries, vandalize firefighting equipment or ignore common sense rules about keeping emergency exits clear.

At 310 McKee Place, management posted a front entrance notice Dec. 4 warning tenants that fire escapes must not be impeded. But days later, eight garbage bags and two beer cases filled with empty bottles completely blocked the escape on the third floor.

Sitting in his third-floor McKee Place apartment, Pitt senior Blake Edelman says he and his roommate were victimized twice: first, by a man ejected from a downstairs party who yanked a fire extinguisher off a wall and bashed a hole in their front door when told to be quiet; and later, by building management, whom Mr. Edelman says patched the door but still had not replaced it as promised three months later.

Tired of the security risk posed by the damaged door's malfunctioning lock, Mr. Edelman, 22, of West New York, N.J., paid a locksmith $279 to make emergency repairs -- but not before someone entered the apartment and stole computer games.

He said he considered taking his landlord, New Oakland Housing, to small claims court but decided it was hopeless. "I graduate this spring. By the time I get a court date, it would probably be the Kate Rath, a communications major at the University of Pittsburgh, talks about problems with her apartment at 331 McKee Place in Oakland.summer," he said.

At 209 Coltart Ave., landlord Jean Misutka said that in the wake of a city inspection, she's working with an electrician to make safety improvements to her building's main hallway including installation of hard-wired smoke detectors.

She complied as well with an inspector's directive to remove bars from ground-floor windows. (Under city code, all bedrooms must have an unblocked window for emergency exit.) But she questioned the logic of doing so in a neighborhood where she said students are more at risk from robberies and break-ins than from being trapped in a burning building by bars that could be pushed out from inside.

Noting how many times she has had to remind tenants about the dangers of either removing batteries from detectors or smoking indoors, she said, "Tenants have to realize they have a responsibility."

The city has told her that with hallway improvements, she will not need to add an exterior fire escape. But one of her tenants, Pitt senior Dave Hauser, of Harbor Creek, Pa., said he worries about his backup plan should a fire block the interior stairs.

"Living up here on the third floor, my mom is worried about us not having an exterior staircase," he said. "I really don't know what we would do. We'd have to jump, or wait up here on the roof."