Fire at Sandy Elementary

Students will return to school at Sandy Elementary tomorrow. The school was closed today while school district officials assessed the damage from Wednesday’s fire.

Crisis counselors will be at the school tomorrow to help the students deal with the impact of the fire. “That’s standard practice when there’s any kind of major incident,” district spokesperson Jennifer Toomer-Cook said.

Two fifth grade classes will be temporarily relocated to the gym until the clean up can be completed.

The fire broke out at the school, 8725 South 280 East, around 2 p.m. yesterday. Students and staff were safely evacuated outdoors. School let out shortly after at 2:50 p.m. and parents were able to pick up their children without incident.

Although the cause of the fire is still under investigation, it appears the fire broke out in a recycling bin in a second floor classroom. Flames traveled up an adjacent wall until they activated the sprinklers which quickly extinguished the fire, according to Sandy Fire Battalion Chief Derek Maxfield. The fire also activated the fire alarm.

The fifth grade classroom was empty at the time of the fire. The teacher and students were in a computer lab.

Fire crews found the cause of the fire, which had already been extinguished by the sprinklers, in the second floor classroom.

“The fire damage itself is contained to the bin and the wall,” Maxfield said.

However, that classroom and an adjacent classroom sustained water damage from the sprinkler system, along with a kindergarten classroom (unoccupied at the time) and an assistant principal’s office on the first floor below them.

The roof of the kindergarten classroom later collapsed due to water damage, according to Maxfield. The school library, located in the basement below the affected classroom, sustained water damage to the walls, carpet and ceiling.

School district officials estimate the damage at between $30,000 and $50,000, Toomer-Cook said.

The school, which experienced a fire in 2006, was retrofit with seismic upgrades this summer.

“The sprinklers did their job and actually put the fire out, which is a good ending to what could have otherwise been a much worse situation,” Maxfield said.

A district official praised the quick response of the fire department.

“These fire people went above and beyond,” Karen Sterling, director of the Office of Student Advocacy and Access, said. “They didn’t want us to go in and get purses and keys and coats, so they had us draw them a map and went in and got them for us so we didn’t have to wait around.”