Fighting Fire in Schools

Due to a number of shooting incidents, schools have gained much attention in the emergency management world since the late 1990’s, although mass school shooting incidents have been occurring since the 1970’s. While less attention has been paid to the potential for fire events, they are certainly a credible scenario and present specific challenges to fire departments.

There are many different types of school construction, although many built from the 1960’s through today are of non-combustible construction, which assists in reducing the possibility of significant fire spread. Schools can be occupied by a large number of people who likely have knowledge of the layout and egress paths from the building, and are likely to quickly exit during normal school hours. This may not be the case during after-school or outside events held in the buildings. It will almost certainly be difficult to gain an accurate accounting of how many people should be in the building at the time of the incident for situations that occur “after-hours.”

Building Design

Most, but not all, school buildings are low-rise buildings that are three stories or less. Many are designed with a large footprint, and may be in complexes with several attached/detached buildings. Construction may be combustible or non-combustible, and depending upon the age of the school (generally before the mid 1970’s), there may be asbestos located within the building. If there is, building staff should know the locations and how it is protected. Access to some sides of the school building can be limited due to the property layout, adjacent or adjoining buildings, or vehicles present to service the building. Doors may be numbered/marked in some fashion, sometimes on the outside, sometimes on the inside and sometimes both, but you won’t know until you visit the school and then document the numbering system. If departments have planned and trained, a fast and efficient response to an emergency at a school building may allow firefighters to safely protect the maximum number of occupants. However, an unprepared response can result in serious risks to both firefighters and school occupants. Fire departments must be aware of the various types of schools in their coverage area, what hazards are present and how they may best respond to incidents.

Where’s the Fire?

Classrooms/Offices: It may be most likely to find a fire occurring in a classroom or office area in a school. Fighting a fire in one of these rooms is not significantly different than handling an apartment fire, although the room itself may be bigger than a room in an apartment. Attempt to contain the fire to the room. Keep the door closed until the engine crew is prepared to enter to make their attack. Older schools may have transoms (windows over the door) that can allow heat and smoke, and perhaps fire, to be transmitted from the room into the hallway. The engine company needs to quickly get up to the fire floor to keep fire and smoke from spreading. In a perfect situation, as the engine crew prepares to enter the fire room a ventilation crew opens the exterior windows if they haven’t already broken out. Search and rescue is important, but will likely require a good number of resources and secondary crews should get above the fire to not only check for victims but also for fire spread.

Gym Accessory Areas: There can be laundry areas and locker rooms that are in locations “deep” in the buildings. These are locations where fires may occur, and may be difficult to access or cause confusion in conditions where smoke is present. If the building design works correctly, there is a good chance that this fire will not spread throughout the building. However, it also is likely to give off a great deal of smoke, and employees may be present in the area attempting to control the fire. Anticipate searching for overcome employees in the area. These areas may only be accessible from the rear or lower levels of a building and you will need to figure out how to access this area. Be prepared to make a quick attack and implement high-capacity ventilation. Close doors that connect to other areas of the school to isolate the problem. Check for vertical/horizontal fire spread via dryer ductwork, even to the roof area. See if you can get into these areas to conduct search and rescue training in them.

Cafeterias/Auditoriums/Gyms: Most schools have one or more large assembly rooms. These rooms may hold hundreds, if not thousands, of occupants and, unless enforced, may be overcrowded for particular events such as concerts and graduations. Although they are not a common location of fires, should a fire occur there is a potential that it can be significant, particularly if arson is involved or if the meeting involves a great deal of combustible materials used for decorations or booths. There is also the potential for numerous victims to be rescued and firefighters must be prepared for this. A rapid attack may be necessary to control the fire and protect the occupants.

Attics/Roofs: Some low-rise schools may have attics that are of combustible construction and foster fire spread. Those built under older building codes are likely “stick-built” with 2 x 4 rafters and may not have sprinklers or fire stops. Roof construction can vary from plywood and asphalt shingles to plastic/fiberglass-type insulation that can require large amounts of manpower to vertically ventilate. Those built under newer codes are likely to have non-combustible construction, but beware of combustible construction that may be out there also. A relatively new challenge to firefighters is the addition of solar panels to the roofs of many schools (to read more about this see “Tackling Solar Panel Challenges” in May, 2014 FireRescue).

Other Areas: Art rooms may have kilns, and “home ec” rooms may have kitchen and laundry setups. Control the utilities to this equipment and a fire may be easy to contain. Technical schools may have a variety of more complicated hazards and need special preplanning attention.

Remember: The only way you will know what you are facing with school buildings is by getting out and look at them.

Fire Attack

Fire departments always need to consider the ability to advance hoselines to all areas of a school. If schools are equipped with standpipes, departments need to carry standpipe hose packs of appropriate length and diameter to attack a fire in any area of the school. There are code requirements for standpipes in the rear area of stages, and in some cases these may be the only standpipe outlets in the building. Hose used in standpipe packs should be at least 1 ¾ inches in diameter, but firefighters may want to consider larger diameter hose such as 2 or 2 ½” inch, particularly if the school is of moderate or large size, unsprinklered or of combustible construction.

If standpipes are not provided, apparatus need to be equipped with attack lines that can reach any area of the school, or be prepared to extend hoselines into the fire area using 2 inch, 2 ½ inch or larger lines. I’ve seen three story schools with no standpipes, necessitating hose lays of 400 feet or more from apparatus located in the fire lane.

Positioning of apparatus will be critical if you expect to use preconnected lines to reach the fire, particularly in buildings with large footprints. Knowing which entrance to use to access various rooms and how to get in through those access points will be critical to a successful fire attack.

Drop-down or sliding gates may be located in areas within the building. These gates can be deployed after school hours to limit access to various parts of the building during community events and activities held within the school building. They can also limit emergency access and should be identified, along with means to clear them if needed in an emergency.

Parking/vehicles can be a mess, particularly during drop-off and pick-up times. Cars will be everywhere and either won’t or can’t get out of your way when you are trying to respond to the building for an emergency. Parents at the building, or arriving before you may just abandon their cars wherever to allow them to run and find their child. Assume you will find this on arrival.

Water Supply

Water supply can be a big issue at schools. Schools are everywhere, in every community, but not every community has public water with “regular” fire hydrants. If you can plan during construction to get a water supply on site, do it. If you have an existing school, and we have seen a number of them, with no water at all on site, you need to put together a solid plan for where water will come from and how you’ll get it there.

Hazmat

Generally, minimal hazardous materials are present in school environments. Cleaning chemicals are common, and one type of incident that has been known to occur is a chlorine-based cleaning agent being mixed with ammonia to create nasty fumes. Responders will need to utilize SCBA to conduct search and rescue, remove the hazard and ventilate the area. Chlorine, or some derivative thereof, may be utilized in pool areas, and similar tactics used for a cleaning agent incident should be employed.

Natural gas, propane or oil will likely be present in utility areas to provide fuel for heating/cooking. However, in many schools these days food is no longer cooked there. It is cooked elsewhere and brought to the school and heated/warmed for eating. This reduces, but does not eliminate, the hazards presented in kitchen environments. Hydraulic oil (sometimes vegetable-based) is used for hydraulic elevators, and chemicals can be found in science labs and storage areas near these labs. Science lab chemical quantities should be limited, although at times storage areas don’t get cleaned out for years and decomposing chemicals might be found to be stored. There should not be significant amounts of other hazardous materials in a school, but only preplanning will reveal this.

The Students

Schools can contain large numbers of students. Fire drills are practiced in most schools a number of times during the year, in some cases monthly, and the good news is that evacuation of schools is generally effective with good systems in place. The students will likely be evacuated upon your arrival. However, after hours and during large events there may be many who are unfamiliar with the exits and drill procedures and may be slow to evacuate. Don’t be surprised to find schools occupied evenings, weekends and holidays.

Protection Features

Some schools are sprinklered–some aren’t. If protection is provided, it will likely be a wet-pipe system and may be combined with a standpipe system. Operations necessary to support the system include ensuring water supplies are operating effectively, keeping valves supplying the operating system(s) fully open until the fire is extinguished and incident command determines it’s appropriate to turn the system off, and ensuring fire pumps are operating properly. There should be firefighters stationed with radios at each valve supplying the operating sprinkler system(s) until they can confirm full extinguishment of the fire–even after the fire has been controlled. This ensures that the sprinkler supply valves are not closed inadvertently and that firefighters can reactivate them should a fire suddenly rekindle.

It is critical that one of the first arriving engine companies pump into the sprinkler/standpipe connections to ensure adequate pressure is available to this equipment. Connect lines to the fire department pumper connection on the system and supply them at the designated pressure (if the designated pressure is not known, pump at 150 psi). This pumping operation should continue until incident command determines it’s appropriate to stop. Some schools may have numerous sprinkler/standpipe systems and therefore numerous fire department connections that may not be interconnected. Clues to which system is operating, and thus which system fire departments should connect to, include an operating water motor gong above or next to the connection, or water discharging from the main drain line below or next to the connection. However, these clues don’t always identify the correct connection and there is the chance they are not properly labeled. Identify the proper connections by surveying the building before the fire and clearly marking the correct ones.

School kitchens are likely to have wet chemical discharge systems over the cooking areas. There may also be specialty systems, such as gaseous suppression systems, protecting school computer and or phone system control rooms. While the systems are likely designed to operate automatically in a fire, there is the potential that the systems have not activated upon the fire department’s arrival, and a decision must be made to manually activate the system if it is the best means for handling the incident. In any case, it is important to allow the system to do its job, and wear breathing apparatus when entering areas protected by these types of systems when an incident is in progress. Survey the building in advance to understand why these systems are there and how best to use them at an incident.

Ladder Ops & Ventilation

Ladder company functions can be eased at these incidents by various building features. In many schools, stairways or access ladders lead to roofs, and these can be used to vertically ventilate the building. There may even be ventilation hatches or skylights available. Depending on the type of school, exterior windows may be sealed shut. A determination must be made as to the necessity and safety of breaking the windows for ventilation purposes. Some windows may be designed not to break, while others may have been designed to allow firefighters to push them in from the outside. Some schools may have HVAC equipment that is designed to control and or evacuate smoke from the building; this can include pressurization of the stairwells. Controls are likely at a centralized location in the building. Get a knowledgeable firefighter or officer there with radio communications, together with a building engineer, and activate/deactivate the building systems as needed to pressurize or exhaust portions of the building to ease firefighting operations. Control utilities, but be aware that shutting off electric to the building may simply initiate the start-up of an emergency generator that will feed power to the building and solar systems may have a separate shutoff. Boilers may also be fed by both gas and some type of liquid fuel.

Truck companies may need to work hard to get a good position to effectively utilize their aerial devices. A corner of the building can be an excellent location (so two sides of the building can be “scrubbed” by the aerial), or the truck may have to be driven onto the lawn or up a path to get it in a position that will allow the aerial to be brought to bear on the largest number of stories.

Forcible entry may be more challenging than you think. Individual classrooms may be locked, and may have significant security hardware. Get access to a master key from school personnel if you can. In many cases, traditional axe and halligan bar combinations won’t cut it. Crews can rapidly be worn down if they have to manually force these doors. Hand-held hydraulic ram tools will likely be needed, particularly if multiple doors need to be forced. Take these with you when entering the building, don’t make them a second thought.

The Biggest Challenge?

Perhaps the most significant challenge at a major incident in a school will be dealing with the parents. They are going to want to get to the school and see that their children are safe, and you will find it very difficult to stop them. If there are 1,000 children in the building, it is quite feasible that 1,500 (or more) parents/relatives will show up quickly to the building, each looking for their child. With social media being what it is today, the word of an incident at school will travel through the community faster than an avalanche, and no amount of crowd control will be able to hold them back. Think about this in advance, and plan for it.

A Final Note

At all school incidents, unless the building is vacant, dealing with life safety issues will be the overriding concern for the incident commander. Be sure that at least one representative of the school staff meets up with you (and stays with you) upon arrival to assist in providing occupant lists and guiding your response. Think about how hoselines can be advanced to all the potential areas in the building. First-arriving firefighters must ensure that evacuation alarms are effectively working, and try to cut off a fire in a school to be sure that occupants can escape. Quick, effective action will save lives.

As with most other types of occupancies, the most important thing a fire department can do to prepare for school incidents is to preplan the buildings. Pre-incident information about the schools will provide responders with intelligence they need to successfully prepare for and mitigate these emergencies. There are requirements in a number of regulations and codes (including International Fire Code Chapter 4, NFPA 1 Section 10.9 and Chapter 16, along with a variety of state codes applying to educational institutions) for floor and other emergency plans to be made available, in some cases annually, to fire departments about these schools. Do not fail to get involved in preplanning during the design/construction phases of any new schools being constructed in your response district. Preplanning will benefit not only the fire department, but the police and EMS community as well.