Arson is the leading cause of school fires in the United States by a wide margin. Intentionally set fires account for 61% of all school structure fires, a figure that rises to 70% in high schools. That rate is nearly nine times higher than any other single cause, according to U.S. Fire Administration data. The second most common cause, cooking equipment, accounts for about 31% of school fires but tends to result in far less damage.
How Common Are School Fires?
U.S. fire departments respond to an estimated 14,700 fires on school properties each year, producing roughly $85 million in annual property losses. The good news is that fatalities are extremely rare. No deaths were reported to the national fire incident database during the most recent multi-year reporting period analyzed by FEMA.
Three in five of those fires are classified as “confined fires,” meaning they never spread beyond the cooking equipment, trash container, boiler, or chimney where they started. These small incidents inflate the total count but cause minimal damage. The fires that do cause serious destruction are overwhelmingly intentional.
Why Arson Dominates the Statistics
Schools are particularly vulnerable to arson for a few reasons. Buildings sit empty for long stretches, including nights, weekends, and summer breaks, giving someone time and access. Exterior trash cans, dumpsters, and storage areas near walls offer easy ignition points. And in high schools especially, students themselves are sometimes responsible. The 70% arson rate in high school fires reflects this pattern. Many of these fires start in bathrooms, locker rooms, or outdoor areas rather than kitchens or mechanical rooms.
Cooking Equipment: The Second Leading Cause
Almost one-third of school fires involve cooking equipment, making it the second most common cause. These fires typically start in school cafeteria kitchens and are usually confined to the equipment itself. Trash and cooking materials are the items most likely to ignite first, particularly in elementary schools. While cooking fires are frequent, they rarely cause significant structural damage because they tend to stay small and are caught quickly.
Heating equipment rounds out the top three at about 10% of school fires. Boilers, furnaces, and portable heaters can ignite nearby materials, especially in older buildings with aging mechanical systems.
College Campuses Are Different
The pattern shifts dramatically in dormitories and campus housing. From 2019 to 2023, U.S. fire departments responded to an average of 3,231 structure fires per year in dorms, fraternities, sororities, and similar properties. Cooking is the dominant cause here, not arson. Nearly 8 out of 10 dorm fires involve cooking equipment, and three out of four fires start in a kitchen or cooking area. The most common contributing factor is unattended equipment, typically a pot or pan left on a stove in a shared kitchen.
These cooking fires account for 58% of civilian injuries in campus housing but only 11% of property damage, since most are caught before they spread far.
When School Fires Are Most Likely
School fires follow predictable timing patterns. They spike during after-school hours and weekends, when buildings have less supervision. The combination of empty hallways and unlocked exterior areas creates opportunities for intentional fires. Cooking-related fires, by contrast, cluster around lunch preparation times during the school day.
How Sprinklers Change the Outcome
Automatic sprinkler systems have a near-perfect track record in schools. A study of fires in schools across England and Wales from 2016 to 2019 found that sprinklers were 100% reliable and 100% effective. In every fire where sprinklers were present in the room of origin (19 incidents), they activated and either fully extinguished the fire (16 cases) or contained it (3 cases).
The contrast with unprotected schools is stark. Schools without sprinklers experienced a fire causing significant damage roughly every two weeks. Among schools without sprinklers, an average of 26 fires per year caused damage exceeding 50 square meters. Among schools with sprinklers, that number was zero. Not a single sprinkler-equipped school experienced fire damage beyond 50 square meters during the entire four-year study period.
The cost difference is equally dramatic. Installing a sprinkler system in a typical school costs between £65,000 and £83,500 (roughly $80,000 to $105,000). Rebuilding a fire-damaged school can easily exceed $6 million, plus the cost of temporary facilities and the disruption to students’ education. Despite this, many older school buildings in both the U.S. and U.K. still lack sprinkler systems entirely.