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RALEIGH -- Fire officials lit a mock dorm room on fire in Raleigh on Friday to help students become more aware of fire danger.

"It felt like you was inside of an oven baking," said Shaw University sophomore, Torrey Hunt.

While Hunt and dozens of other students watched, Raleigh firefighters set two rooms ablaze – one with sprinklers, one without.

"We want to show them the effectiveness of sprinklers and how it would really give you more time to get out," said Larry Stanford, Raleigh’s assistant fire chief.

Fire officials say a typical dorm room without sprinklers will be fully engulfed in flames within 45 seconds; a room with a sprinkler system will see the fire addressed within 20 seconds.

The problem is, a number of living quarters on North Carolina campuses don’t have sprinklers.

"Most of them are living in dorms that don't have sprinklers,” explained Stanford. “The code is that if it wasn't required at the time the building was built, you cannot make a jurisdiction retrofit to meet today's codes."

Of Duke University’s 20 dorms, 11 do not have sprinklers. At UNC Charlotte, 33 of 53 buildings in residence complexes are without.

For UNC Greensboro, 11 of 24 dorms don’t have sprinklers, while two of UNC Wilmington’s 13 residential halls don’t have the devices.

“We can always replace buildings and furniture and things of that nature,” said Stanford, “but we can't replace a life."

Every year, U.S. fire departments respond to an average of 3,500 fires on campuses.