Scotland School Sprinkler Save

• Occupancy: Community campus which incorporates Crieff High School
• Where: Crieff, Scotland
• When; 21 February 2022
• Fire Rescue Service; Scottish Fire Rescue Service (SFRS)
• Time of Call; 12:45
• AFSS; BS12845, Commercial Sprinkler installation

The benefits of protecting educational buildings in Scotland with fire sprinklers clearly demonstrated once again, in this case a community campus proving a range of sporting opportunities for both the children attending the campus and the wider community clearly demonstrated following this fire

The incident

• Two fire pumping appliances from SFRS were mobilised to a fire following the activation of the premise sprinkler system.
• On arrival operational crews identified the community campus (650 people) had been evacuated due to a fire within the ground floor toilet.
• No further action was taken by operational crews as the fire had been extinguished before their arrival by the activation of one concealed sprinkler head.
• Total property area damaged by fire 5m2
• Material ignited, toilet paper/fixed plastic toilet roll dispenser

Business Continuity

School fires have a devasting impact on both a school and a community, every year many schools are damaged or destroyed by fires, affecting the education of pupils across the country causing millions of pounds worth of damage.

On this occasion, the impact of this school fire was minimal due to the decision at the design stage to install fire sprinklers throughout the school: –

• Fire, heat/smoke damage contained to the compartment of origin
• Other locations within the school were unaffected
• Schools’ continuity allowing pupils/students to return to normality far more efficiently with considerably less disruption
• The campus was closed for only 2.5 hours

This incident clearly demonstrates the benefits of fire sprinklers in schools

• In terms of life safety/property protection
• Preventing large fires, protects the environment by avoiding C02 emissions
• Reducing water supply contamination
• Maintain the school’s continuity allowing students to return to their classrooms in a matter of hours
• Protect students, staff, and firefighters

Arson

• Interrogating the Sprinkler Saves UK database this is the fifth school sprinkler save reported in the space of 9 months.
• 4 of the 5 incidents reported as malicious
• location of the fire:
  1. Three within a toilet
  2. One within a changing room

Clearly identifying the importance of providing sprinkler protection within toilets/changing rooms

 Legislation

• The benefits of fire sprinklers being mandatory in Scotland clearly identified once again, if this incident had taken place south of the border in England the outcome could have been so different
• Fire sprinklers are only mandatory in new school buildings in Scotland and Wales but not in England and Northern Ireland.
• Building Bulletin 100 (Design document for new schools) is currently being reviewed in England, highlighting that the sprinkler expectation will be removed.
• Our position is that that government explicitly maintains the sprinkler expectation in the revised BB100 publication so that fewer schools are damaged and destroyed by fire.

This image provided by Derbyshire Fire& Rescue Service clearly identifies the impact of a fire in a school where sprinklers are not installed

Links

• Sprinkler Saves Website, Derbyshire School Sprinkler Save 22 May 2022
• BAFSA: Sprinklers in Schools animation
• NFCC Sprinkler Tool Kit

Source, Our thanks to SFRS for  reporting the above mentioned incident