ORONO – Members of the Fire Department staged a dramatic demonstration Wednesday afternoon in support of a legislative bill that would require the installation of sprinkler systems in residence halls on campuses throughout the state.

Students who had gathered in the steam plant parking lot on College Avenue for Maine Day celebrations stopped playing mud pit volleyball and tossing each other in Jell-O water to watch as firefighters set ablaze two structures designed to replicate university dorm rooms. One was equipped with a sprinkler system and the other was not.

With donations from local businesses and the University of Maine, Orono firefighters constructed two nearly identical dorm rooms. Each contained a bed, dresser, desk, computer, stereo system, clothes and microwave, as well as the posters, papers, pizza boxes and assorted items that college students accumulate.

Capt. Henry Vaughn of the Orono Fire Department told the crowd that the response time from the Main Street station to any of the 19 dorms on campus averaged five minutes. He said that a room without a sprinkler system would be destroyed while those minutes ticked by, but a sprinkler system could extinguish a fire started in a dorm room before firefighters arrived.

Vaughn invited senior Laura Crockett of Orono to light a match inside the room without the sprinklers, and the captain began to count down the minutes after the smoke detector went off.

One minute – white smoke wafted out of the dorm room window. Two minutes – gray smoke billowed out of the window and snaked under the closed door.

Three minutes – dark smoke billowed out of the blackened window, blown across College Avenue toward a campus fraternity house. Four minutes – the makeshift dorm room was obscured by dense smoke as sirens drowned out the sound of crackling flames.

Five minutes – firefighters converged on the building as the door was blown open by the intense heat. Several firefighters, wearing masks and oxygen tanks, carried the hose and entered the room. They disappeared in thick smoke, while outside other firefighters used axes to break windows. For a brief moment, orange flames lapped at the window frame.

Within 10 minutes the fire was out, but the dorm room and its contents were a total loss.

A fire then was lit in the room equipped with sprinklers and Vaughn again began his countdown. After a minute, some smoke was visible through the window, but it quickly dissipated. When firefighters arrived five minutes later and flung open the door, they sprayed the room with water. The wall above the pizza boxes where the fire started was blackened and a T-shirt hanging nearby was destroyed. Everything else was a bit wet, but intact. The sprinklers came on when the temperature in the room hit 150 degrees – less than 30 seconds after the fire started, according to firefighters who stayed in the room to observe.

Only six of the 19 dorms on the Orono campus are now equipped with fire equipment. LD 1561 would require that all dorms in the University of Maine System and the Technical College System as well as Maine Maritime Academy and the Maine School of Science and Mathematics install sprinkler systems in residence halls by 2011. If passed, the bill would ask voters to approve a $10 million no-interest loan fund to fund the program. The bill is now being considered by the Criminal Justice Committee.

A year ago, a fire at Hancock Hall displaced more than 230 students at UM. Vaughn said there have been three other major dorm fires on campus since 1990.