A Survey of Fire Loads in Elementary Schools and High Schools

This article presents a fire load survey of schools in Ottawa, Canada. The survey was conducted from February 2009 to May 2009. Four elementary schools and three high schools with a total floor area of 6313.0 m2 were surveyed. In the elementary schools, three types of rooms were surveyed: classrooms, computer rooms, and libraries. In the high schools, five types of rooms: classrooms, computer rooms, science rooms, art rooms, and libraries were surveyed. The floor area, window area, and percentage of floor area covered by furnishings are also provided. The results show that the mean fire load density for classrooms in the elementary schools is 397.5 MJ/m2, which is about twice that in the surveyed high schools. The mean value of total fire load density for all the surveyed rooms in elementary schools is 426.3 MJ/m2 and that for high schools is 313.7 MJ/m2.