Someone set the Fine Arts Building on fire just after 11 p.m. on March 23. An unknown person started the fire in the pathway between the kitchen and the bus turnaround and damaged part of the wall.
All of the repairs made after the fire cost Robert Thom, director of facilities, and his team about $500 to fix.
The first one to see the aftermath was Leroy Timblin, technical theater teacher and theater manager. At around 7 a.m. the next morning, he arrived to the smell of smoke and went around to investigate.
“I started inspecting, making sure nothing was on fire, because we were doing a show at that time, and I was concerned that maybe somebody left something on and it burned,” Timblin said. “And then when I went outside, I saw the pile of ash and debris back there, and that’s when I knew something was definitely up.”
Timblin notified Thom, and Head of School Ronnie Codrington-Cazeau soon joined to investigate. Timblin said the smell of smoke lingered inside the stagecraft area for a week after the fire, even with fans running to bring fresh air in.
“There was a bookcase that was still smoldering in the walkway behind the kitchen with soot and climbing the wall and on the ceiling approximately four feet wide, the smell of what I would describe as a strong campfire smell in the makerspace, stagecraft and the upper fine arts classrooms,” Thom said.
A police report was filed the same day and came to look at the video footage from the security cameras on campus and the damage at the site of the fire. “It makes me feel really glad that we have cameras and we have a really good alarm security system,” Codrington-Cazeau said.
Susan Lansverk, Assistant Head of School for Finance and Operations, was not willing to share the footage or photos with the Puma Press from the crime scene.
Thom and his team are not concerned about security on campus. Their precautions against possible future fires include making sure nothing flammable is left lying around.
“Me and the facilities team, on an hourly basis every school day, walk the entire campus wearing their yellow vests to just kind of look at: Are there doors that are propped open? Are there people in areas that they shouldn’t be?” Thom said. “We walk from the back parking lot, the walkway here, back behind the kitchen, up around the ULab, just looking for anything that might be out of the ordinary, so that we’re ahead of it rather than behind it.”
The fire was on a concrete wall so it burned out by itself and was still smoldering the next morning.
“I was really glad that the person set the fire against the concrete wall,” Codrington-Cazeau said. “Had it been against anything wood, we would have had a real problem at school.”
