Commack, NY - November 9, 2016 - The Kerry Rose Foundation, a Long Island non-profit dedicated to improving fire safety conditions in college housing, has announced its 3^rd annual 5K Trail Run and fundraiser will take place the morning of Saturday, November 26^th at the Hoyt Farm Nature Preserve (200 New Highway, Commack, NY). The event will feature t-shirts, prizes and psychic readings by Nancy D’Erasmo. Pre-registration for the race is $20 and tickets for teams of 10+ are $15/person. Day of race registration is $25.

The foundation is named for Kerry Rose Fitzsimons, a Commack native and Marist College student who perished in an off-campus fire along with two other students in January 2012. The tragedy led her family to create the Kerry Rose Foundation to raise awareness about fire prevention and safety, specifically the importance of fire detection and sprinklers systems.

Sponsorships are available by contacting the foundation at 631-379-4088, 631-356-7724, or email. Donations to the Kerry Rose Foundation are tax deductible as allowable by law.  To register for the race online, visit JustFinish.net.

From January 2000 to present, there have been 126 fire fatalities at on- and off-college campus housing, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Fire sprinklers were not present in any of these fires. Still many New York college students remain unprotected by the lifesaving technology, as the Empire State does not require student housing to have fire sprinklers unless it was built post-1984 or have undergone major renovations since then.

“There are more than 20 million college students in the U.S. and 1.3 million in New York, many who go away to college and live on their own for the first time. Oftentimes, students and families don’t even consider whether a college or university’s housing has a fire suppression system. Our goal is to create awareness about students’ rights on and off-campus, and about the lifesaving importance of fire sprinklers, which reduce the chance of dying in a fire by about 80%,” said Robert Fitzsimons, Kerry Rose’s father.

The Kerry Rose Foundation’s efforts led to the passing of the New York State Kerry Rose Fire Sprinkler Notification Act in 2013, which has empowered nearly 1.3 million annual students attending colleges and universities in New York State to make better-informed housing decisions by the disclosure of whether a student housing facility is equipped with fire sprinkler systems.  There is also similar federal legislation in Congress.

The organization was also instrumental in the passing of New York State legislation in 2014 that requires written notice in leases to prospective tenants of whether a home has a fire sprinkler system, as well as requires builders of one- and two-family homes to provide information about the installation and maintenance of automatic sprinklers. 

For more information about the 5K and the foundation, please visit KerryRoseFoundation.Org.