Roanoke College has come up with a plan to safeguard against another carbon monoxide leak like the one in July that killed one person and sickened more than 100 as they slept in a dormitory.

More than a dozen recommendations -- as far-reaching as weekly inspections of all mechanical rooms and as specific as the placement of a carbon monoxide detector next to the gas fireplace in the president's dining room -- were detailed in a task force report released Tuesday.

Much of the report deals with the campuswide installation of carbon monoxide detectors, a process the college began within days after the gas leaked from a faulty water heater in the Sections dormitory on the morning of July 14. The invisible, odorless gas killed a retired Lutheran pastor and sent another 113 summer program attendees to the hospital.

Rescue efforts were complicated when Salem firefighters missed two rooms during a check of the building. More than three hours after being called to the scene, firefighters found 91-year-old Walter Vierling dead in one room and two women close to death in the other.

Salem firefighters said the dorm's unusual layout led to the confusion. To address that issue, the task force recommended that the school continue to develop floor plans for each building and share them with rescue officials.

As part of its own review of the incident, the Salem Fire-EMS Department has already begun to collect floor plans for high-occupancy buildings at Roanoke College and elsewhere, such as hospitals, schools and hotels.

The plan is for crews conducting a room-to-room search to radio back to a command point after each room is cleared and for a supervisor to check the floor plan to make sure no one is missed, said Capt. John Prillaman of the fire-EMS department. Training on the new procedures will begin later this month.

No one has been able to say whether Vierling might have lived had he been found sooner.

Shortly after the gas leak, college officials installed household carbon monoxide detectors in every building on campus at a cost of $50,000. But such commercially available alarms are far from foolproof, issuing false alarms in some cases and failing to detect dangerous carbon monoxide levels in other cases, according to a 2002 study by the Gas Technology Institute.

The new detectors have caused at least two false alarms, one that prompted the evacuation of the Colket student center, college spokeswoman Teresa Gereaux said.

In the coming months, the school plans to install more sophisticated carbon monoxide detectors in mechanical rooms. Those detectors will be connected to a fire alarm system that will automatically issue an alert when the gas is detected.

The high-end alarms will supplement the commercially available brands that will remain in dorm hallways and other campus buildings.

Paul Clifford, a California scientist whose research found problems with commercially available brands, said he didn't know enough about the Honeywell detectors the school has ordered to offer an opinion.

"They're hedging their bets, and that's the right thing to do," he said of the college's decision to use two types of alarms.

The task force also called for weekly inspections of mechanical rooms, beefed-up evacuation plans that include safety information posted on the back of every dorm room door, the purchase of three hand-held carbon monoxide detectors for spot checks of air quality and a number of education and awareness initiatives.

"The work of the task force has helped make our campus safer," said Roanoke College President Sabine O'Hara, who appointed the five-member panel shortly after the July 14 incident, which is believed to be the worst carbon monoxide leak in recent Virginia history.

All of the panel's recommendations have either been implemented or are in the process of being implemented, Gereaux said.

The water heater in the basement of Sections that leaked carbon monoxide has been replaced. Although the manufacturer of the water heater has suggested the problem was caused by improper maintenance by school officials, an attorney hired by several victims of the gas leak says his investigation points to design flaws with the heater.