Aging dorms, outdated fire systems and student apathy toward fire alarms make college campuses particularly dangerous places when it comes to fires.

But officials say the University has worked especially hard in the last few years to upgrade fire safety measures across the board.

According to CFD estimates, Harvard College has spent several hundred thousand dollars over the past several years to improve safety systems in the residence buildings alone.

Among the improvements was the installation of fire alarms that flash a strobe light in addition to sounding an alarm when activated.

Fire alarms across the campus are all linked to a central data-gathering site, which University engineers staff around the clock. The system was upgraded within the past few years and plays a crucial role in the University's response to a potential fire, says Thomas E. Vautin, associate vice president for facilities and environmental services.

"That's all very state of the art," Vautin says.

When a smoke detector goes off in a House room, a signal is transmitted to the control center but does not immediately set off fire alarms in the rest of the building. If the alarm does not reset in a short period of time, however, control center computers trigger alarms in the rest of the building and activate the University's fire response plan.

But according to Harvard Manager of Electrical Engineering and Utilities Daniel K. Wong, the alarm systems are only the "first line of defense."