By Martha Quillin and Jerry Allegood – Raleigh News & Observer

OCEAN ISLE BEACH – Bigger beach houses all along the North Carolina coast are packing people into places where sprinklers and other fire safety measures are not required, state fire marshals say.

“We have hundreds of these homes identical to the one that burned up in Ocean Isle,” said Doug Remaley, fire marshal for Dare County on the Outer Banks. “Is there something we can do about it? No. Because the building code council classifies them as single-family homes. The fire code does not apply.”

On Sunday, seven South Carolina college students staying in an Ocean Isle Beach house died when the structure caught fire before 7 a.m. In all, 13 students were staying in the house.

The N.C. Building Code Council writes the rules that govern building construction in the state, using international and national standards and making amendments as it sees fit. It is often criticized as being stacked in favor of the building industry and unwilling to impose rules that would increase building safety when the costs are deemed too high.

That has been the case with fire safety regulations, Remaley said.

Fire safety is addressed in two ways: in the state building code, which dates to the 1930s, and in the fire code, established in response to the Imperial Foods chicken plant fire in Hamlet that killed 25 people in 1991.

The building code, which applies to residential as well as commercial construction, dictates such things as materials, the number of ways into and out of a structure, and the number and placement of smoke detectors.

The fire code applies only to commercial buildings and multifamily housing of three units or more, where it prohibits hazards such as grills on wooden decks and obstructions to common hallways. It does not apply to single-family homes, even those such as a current offering in Corolla, on the Outer Banks, that has nine bedrooms, sleeps 28 and rents for almost $13,000 a week in season.

The house that caught fire Sunday morning had six bedrooms. Authorities have not determined the cause of that blaze, which raced through the two-story house in minutes.

Ocean Isle Beach officials say the blaze was an anomaly. It was the first major structure fire in seven years, said Fire Chief Robert Yoho. He said the house was a private dwelling and not a rental property.

Yoho said the house had smoke alarms, which the state requires, but did not have a sprinkler system, which is not required.

Fire marshals across the country have pushed for sprinklers to be required in residential construction for years, to little avail. The situation in South Carolina is like that in North Carolina. South Carolina law doesn’t require single-family homes, including vacation cottages, to contain sprinklers, according to the state fire marshal’s office.

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