Design Fires for Fire Protection Engineering of Swedish School Buildings

In Sweden, at least one school fire occurs every day. In most cases, arson is the cause of that fire. The costs for these arson fires are considerable, especially those occurring after school hours. This paper presents data for typical arson fire scenarios in schools and kindergartens in Sweden. This data will later be used to evaluate, with regard to cost and benefit, different active and passive fire protection measures used to prevent or reduce the consequences of arson in schools. Four typical ignition scenarios have been identified: garbage or flammable liquid beside the façade, a small vehicle (moped or motorcycle) beside the façade, flammable liquid ignited indoors and burning fireworks thrown indoors. These scenarios are considered to deviate from the typical design fires that would be used in a fire safety engineering design. A literature survey has been made of fire data (e.g. heat release rate and fire growth) for these scenarios and suggestions made for experiments in those cases where data is scarce. The survey showed that available data is sufficient for all scenarios except fireworks indoors and an experimental series was therefore conducted to provide data on this particular ignition scenario. The results of the literature survey and experiments are presented in this paper