Fire officials say Oklahoma's schools doing better on fire violations

Monday, February 14th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The bad news is that state fire officials have found thousands of fire code violations in Oklahoma schools in the past two years. The good news is that more schools are correcting them.

There were 4,365 instances of schools failing to meet fire safety standards in 1998 and 1999, the State Fire Marshal's office said. The report showed 304 correction plans had been filed after 1,034 school inspections, and that many schools were already fixing the problems and did not need to submit a correction plan.

The report said that proves "that superintendents and code enforcement agents are working closely to bring the schools up to code." roblems cited. "It means the alarm wasn't functioning, the doors were locked or the exit light wasn't working," among other things, explained fire marshal's spokeswoman Shannon Rowland.

Electrical problems were the most common deficiency, with 702 of them noted in the report. Most of the buildings were located in small, rural school districts, Rowland said. The Legislature gave $43,000 to the fire marshal's office in 1998, after a 1997 study showed almost half of the schools in its jurisdiction had not been inspected for five years.