Over 1,100 classrooms razed by fire in the past five years – Zurich report

Insurer says the damage has resulted in hundreds of thousands of teaching hours lost

Over 1,100 classrooms razed by fire in the past five years – Zurich report

Insurance News

By Lyle Adriano

More than 1,100 classrooms have been destroyed by school fire incidents over the past five years, a new report from Zurich Municipal has found.

The report also noted that there have been 2,300 school fire incidents in the UK in the last half-decade. Those fires have damaged more than 74,000 square metres of teaching facilities, Zurich said, citing Home Office data from all 44 fire authorities in England.

It has been estimated that due to the fire damage, some 390,000 teaching hours could be lost in the next year, disrupting the study of 28,000 children.

Zurich has pointed to the data as further proof that sprinklers must be made mandatory in England. By comparison, Wales and Scotland have already made sprinklers compulsory in all new and refurbished schools.

“These figures highlight the devastating impact of fires on the school estate. Unless the government changes the law on sprinklers, accidental and malicious fires will continue to blight schools and children’s futures,” said Zurich Municipal head of education Tilden Watson.

Watson also said that young students and their studies have already been severely impacted by the pandemic, so ministers “must ensure no more classroom time is lost for a generation that has already fallen behind.”

The findings came as the government announced its plans to pour £1 billion into rebuilding 50 schools over the next five years.

“Fire won’t just wipe out progress in improving the condition of schools, it will send it into reverse.  It makes no economic sense to pump millions of pounds into refurbishing schools without protecting them with sprinklers,” commented Watson. “Sprinklers are proven to contain the spread of blazes and limit the damage they inflict.”

Zurich’s latest report is a follow-up to a previous study released last November. In that report, the insurer found that 480 primary and secondary schools experienced fire incidents in 2019 – which is an average of 40 fire incidents each month.

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