In two weeks, nine college students have died in off campus fires across the country, renewing concerns about fire safety on and around college campuses. Fire inspectors in Brookings share those concerns.

When KSFY asked some SDSU students living off campus about their smoke detectors, they gave a similar response.

"It's dead," says Brady Bunde, an SDSU junior.

"There's no battery," says freshman Andrew Bardwell.

Fire code requires landlords to have working smoke detectors on each floor. Owners of new buildings need one in each room.

"It looks like it's painted over where the smoke detector would have been," says Bunde, after inspecting his room.

The houses KSFY visited didn't have a single working detector on the same floor as the bedrooms, even though they're proven to double your chance of surviving a fire.

"I've never really been concerned about it just because the walls are so thin," says Bunde. "I imagined I'd be able to hear from out in the hallway but since there's no battery in the hallway one, that might be an issue."

"Everything I own is in this room so if it were to go up in flames I'd have nothing but the car parked out by the curb right now," says Bardwell.

That's exactly what happened to SDSU students three times in the past four years. A fire ripped through a duplex in February 2004, and several students were injured after jumping from the second story windows.

"Everything I own was in there I mean I'm down to one pair of pants and a shirt right now," duplex tenant Greg Geary said then.

This past spring, fire nearly destroyed the Sigma Phi Delta house. The damage is now repaired but fire inspectors say the problems remain.

"We do have problems with some of the landlords," says deputy fire chief Pete Bolzer. "Obviously they're just in it for the money. They're not going to spend any more on that property than they have to and that's an unfortunate fact."

Although fire inspectors in Brookings know code violations are wide spread in rental properties, they say tackling the problem is extremely difficult. Two people handle all the inspections in town, meaning each house gets visited just once every four years.

Bolzer says he's pushing to hire another inspector, which would cut that time in half. But he says landlords aren't the only ones to blame.

"Detectors mysteriously disappear somehow and batteries mysteriously disappear," Bolzer says. "And that's why I'm really focusing on education because it's everyone's responsibility."

Bardwell and Bunde say they never touched their detectors. That's also part of the problem.

"I never really thought about it actually," Bardwell says. "Never checked the house to see how many were in here. Never gave it a second thought."

"It's definitely our blame too," Bunde says. "Even, I would say, almost more so just because we should be the ones to warn landlords."

It's a lesson fire inspectors are trying to teach, in hopes of hearing a new response during their next visit.

"Working like a charm," Bardwell says, after testing the new battery he placed in his smoke detector.

Andrew Bardwell's landlord told KSFY he was going to get all of his properties up to fire code on November 3rd and 4th. KSFY checked with his tenants on Friday and so far nothing has changed.

By Kent Erdahl