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Ken Bishop of Wormald Fire Systems outlines the problem and comments on the solutions available to reduce high level losses currently being experienced in schools
Contractors, building and maintaining schools under the Government’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI), are investing heavily in fire protection for schools to make them safer from arsonists and accidents.
With responsibility for the 25 year ‘lifetime’ of their agreement – before the properties are handed back to the State – PFI companies are employing a range of solutions, and are creating a sea change in the world of fire protection.
Wormald Fire Systems – recently secured a GB pound 640,000 contract from Wates Construction to protect 10 primary schools in northern England with sprinkler systems, and its Doors division is installing fire and security doors at the rate of one school each week.
School Fires – The Problem
Zurich Municipal says the cost of school fires in 2002 hit a record high of GB pound 96.6 million – more than double the cost of four years previously.
There are around 2000 school fires in the UK each year, and Zurich estimates that up to 90 per cent of these are started deliberately.
These statistics reveal a disturbing trend – and do not count the hidden costs in terms of danger to fire fighters, disrupted education for pupils, lost employment for school staff, and the consequential effects on communities.
What can be done?
In June 2003, the Government’s All Party Parliamentary Fire Safety Group sponsored a special seminar entitled ‘Saving Our Schools’. It was a key event in a year, which saw increasing concern about the problem of school fires in general – and arson in particular. The focus turned to automatic fire sprinklers.
Addressing the seminar, the Chief Fire Officer of Lancashire Fire and Rescue, Peter Holland, who also chairs the National Fire Sprinkler Network (NFSN) said; “As an organisation we believe school fires are a national problem. Virtually all schools are exposed to the risk of easy access and very rapid fire spread. Although increased awareness of losses due to theft and vandalism has led to an increase in risk management programmes within schools, it has had little impact on the number of fires. With these factors in mind, one of the core objectives of the NFSN is to pursue the campaign for the introduction of sprinklers in schools.”
Many fire brigades endorse the NFSN comments, including Greater Manchester Fire Service which experiences on average one school arson attack every four days, and an accidental school fire every five-and-a-half days.
Assistant County Fire Officer, John Judd, told the London seminar; “The value of sprinklers in schools is clear. School buildings often have poor standards of fire separation and have a much greater fire load in them today than when the buildings were first constructed.
“The greatest argument for providing sprinklers in our more vulnerable schools must be the disruption that happens after a school fire. Valuable resources are lost, school records, even assessable course work destroyed. The most vulnerable schools are in the communities whose children can least afford disruption to their education. Buildings can be replaced, but a damaged education damages people for life.”
Zurich Municipal takes the problem so seriously that it is pursuing a campaign to make sprinklers compulsory in all new or refurbished schools. The organisation’s Underwriting Manager, Larry Stokes, who also chairs the Arson Prevention Bureau’s Schools Working group, said; “Losses from schools in buildings protected by sprinklers estimated to be only one tenth of those in unprotected buildings, and they have already proved their value in a number of schools.
“Sadly, however, some schools are still learning the hard way, and the cost – both in financial terms and disruption to education and communities – continues to rise. More worrying is that lives are being put at risk as these attacks are increasingly taking place during school hours.”
The Sprinkler Solution
A number of factors combine to make schools easy targets for arsonists, and the location, structure and layout of most school buildings means that when a fire is started it is likely to spread quickly. Therefore, a fire can be well under way by the time the fire brigade is alerted.
Schools in rural areas, and those with extensive playing areas are particularly vulnerable, as are districts where the level of break-ins, theft, vandalism and fires is higher than average. Many schools have internal layouts that do little to prevent the fire spread, including large open plan areas, poor quality doors and lightweight construction.
Taking all these problems into consideration, it can be argued that the solution to school fires would be a system that at any time of day or night would detect a fire, raise the alarm, and extinguish or control fire growth until the fire brigade arrives. Automatic sprinkler systems fulfil this.
Sprinklers can be installed both in new buildings and as retrofit into existing buildings. New buildings offer an excellent opportunity to locate sprinkler heads so as to make malicious damage very difficult, and enable the designer to totally conceal the pipework. Retro-fitting is achievable, although particular care is needed during the design stage achieve the objectives described above. The system should be as simple as possible, and designed where possible to be installed during the summer holiday period.
Physical Protection
Whether or not a school benefits from a sprinkler system to protect it from fire, the simple logic of preventing would-be arsonists or from entering in the first place is compelling. The same goes for would-be burglars whose main aim is to steal, but who often set fires to destroy evidence.
A range of specially designed security doors and shutters is available to combat these threats, and statistics show that forced entry can be reduced by up to 80 per cent. (Wormald itself has experienced a number of cases where intruders have tried on consecutive nights to gain entry through security doors to schools or internal computer rooms, but have failed completely).
Modern security doors are manufactured from steel, although – with aesthetics in mind – there is now a wide choice of finishes, including the realistic wood grain effect offered on Wormald’s S43 door that is highly popular for schools.
These doors are manufactured to strict international quality standards, although it must be noted that even doors must be serviced and maintained regularly by fully qualified engineers.
Fire Detection and Alarm
Any fire will cause damage through smoke and flames before the fire brigade arrives, and further damage will then be cause by water as the fire is extinguished. Some cost is therefore inevitable, and the key to improving fire detection is to find a suitable balance between risk assessment, necessary investment and potential payback.
Because fires are a random event, a means of giving a warning in case of fire is mandatory. It may be that all that is required, from a life safety point of view, is a manual call point system. However, a manual call point system alone will. be of no value in respect of protecting property when people are not present. Good risk assessment is essential to determine what type of fire detection and alarm system will maximise life safety, reduce fire losses and minimise disruption to the school’s efficient day to day running.
A conventional fire detection and alarm system that incorporates smoke detection and, where appropriate, heat detection, that operates automatically and identifies the general location of a fire may be all that is required in a small school.
For medium to large sized schools an analogue/addressable fire detection and alarm systems may be more appropriate. These are designed to identify the exact location of a fire, and are programmed to minimise the likelihood of unwanted alarms. These systems can also provide a higher sensitivity at night, when the building is not occupied. With automatic links to central monitoring stations, the fire service can be alerted immediately.
The choice of detection and alarm system must be made based on a risk assessment, but it should be noted that regular servicing and maintenance is vital to ensure the system will work when required.
Maintenance issues
Anyone specifying an analogue/addressable detection system for a school should also be aware that there are two quite distinct types – ‘Closed Protocol’ and ‘Open Protocol’.
With Closed Protocol systems, all components are generally manufactured by the same company, and use fully compatible software programmes that are not available to third party companies. This limits service and maintenance contracts plus any system upgrades to the original system supplier for the expected 25-year life of a PFI funded school.
Open Protocol systems do not exclude other suppliers, installers and service engineers from maintaining or extending a system or replacing detectors to accommodate change of use. Open protocol systems provide forwards and backwards compatibility between the systems to make system upgrades by any supplier logistically easier in phases over time.
They also ensure that the client reserves the right to issue the service contract renewal to a vendor of their choice if the existing vendor fails to meet the client’s expectations.
Fire Safety Awareness
Apart from technical fire protection matters, the human element in a fire situation cannot be emphasised too much. Fire safety awareness is important for any school, not only to help ensure a fire does not occur, but also who should do what when it does.
School operators need to know what procedures are in place, when are they tested, whether the results are logged, and whether they are reviewed. Specific issues such as the provision of ‘safe havens’ for special needs pupils also need to be addressed.
Other matters, such as what procedures are in place to identify potential fire raisers, also require careful consideration.
Conclusion
With the incidence – and cost – of school fires increasing, valuable investment (both Government and public/private sector partnerships) is literally going up in smoke. Fire fighters are being put at unnecessary risk, children are being deprived of uninterrupted education, and communities are being traumatised.
But a wide range of solutions are available, from sprinkler systems to security doors, and from detection and alarm systems to new methods of identifying fire setters.
It is to be hoped that these solutions, together with a determination on the part of Government, local authorities, PFI companies, schools and local communities, can continue to make our schools safer than ever before.