Neighbours to Central High Sedgewick Public School noticed two- to three-foot flames coming from the roof of the building on Wednesday afternoon/evening, August 14. Soon, huge clouds of black smoke were pouring from the school high into the sky, and onlookers feared the worst.
Sedgewick Fire Chief Tyson Armitage was heading out his door already before receiving the official call. “My uncle was at a meeting at the Rec. Centre across the street and he’d called me to tell me about the fire,” he said.
When Armitage got to the station, he paged the Killam and Hardisty Departments to join in.
Sedgewick firefighters were on scene within minutes of receiving the call, around 7:28 p.m. with nine fire fighters on the truck, and another five joining the crew on scene.
Killam Fire Chief Joe Knievel said Killam members could see the smoke as soon as they headed out onto the highway towards Sedgewick.
“It looked very serious at that point.”
He says by the time his department arrived and got set up, Sedgewick fire fighters had the blaze 95 per cent under control.
Armitage says he quickly assessed the situation once on scene, and once he determined that the fire was only on the roof at that time, he saw that the southwest corner of the building would be the safest point to get onto the roof.
The firefighters on the hose closest to the fire scaled the ladder wearing full gear including breathing apparatus, weighing in at 75-90 lbs over and above their body weight.
Armitage said Sedgewick’s 14 firefighters, 11 Killam firefighters, and eight Hardisty firefighters worked very well as a team.
“It’s a good testament to our future fire agreement.”
The utilities were cut off already, and the power turned off at the main breaker. The Sedgewick Fire Department has access to keys to the school at all times.
Armitage says that with the extra help on hand, he was able to delegate some of the duties, and says he asked Knievel and Regional Emergency Services Coordinator Kim Cannady to check the building’s interior.
Knievel says they were the first to enter the building, and from what he saw, he thinks that damages were limited to a small area of the school.
Knievel says that the interior damage is mostly water and some smoke damage.
Armitage says the firefighters did their best to minimize water damage to the school, changing from high volume hoses once they got a handle on the fire.
No firefighting was done from the interior. Knievel believes it did appear at one point that the smoke in the school’s large gymnasium was getting thicker, which gave he and Cannady cause for alarm, but it was determined to be venting in from the outside versus any live burning.
Firefighting crews then removed some of the exterior walls of the gym from the roof area to ensure the fire had not spread to the interior.
Reports of propane tanks exploding by onlookers were not correct, Knievel says.
“The propane tanks vented, but didn’t explode. There’s some danger because of the temperature of the flames, when it happens, but it’s a better outcome than an explosion.”
Armitage says that the portion of the roof that was on fire was undergoing some work at the time, and some of the flames came from the materials for the roof.
(photo courtesy Flagstaff County/Facebook)
Knievel says it is his understanding that work on the roof had ended hours earlier, with the fire breaking out just minutes after workers had completed a two-hour fire watch and left for the day.
The fire drew a large crowd, and Armitage says they were very respectful and gave the firefighters lots of space to work.
Battle River School Division (BRSD) Communications Officer Diane Hutchinson toured the school on Thursday, Aug. 14 and added that after viewing some of the videos and photos from Wednesday, she was shocked to find no evidence of the fire at ground level today.
She says that some division members learned about the fire through the fire department, while others saw it first on social media.
BRSD was able to get a member of the facilities department on scene Wednesday night, and Principal Klassen was also in attendance.
At present, the extent of the damages is not precisely known, but there is a cleanup crew already on site. Hutchinson is hopeful that damage is as minimal as it appears.
More will be known after structural, engineering, and electrical inspections are done, for now there are no firm plans to delay the start of school.
“I have to say, thanks to the first responders on the scene so quickly, the damage was not as bad as it might have been.”
Parents and students will be kept up to date directly by Principal Klassen, with a report expected to be going out on Thursday.
Leslie Cholowsky Editor
Read the FULL STORY and pictorial in the next edition of The Community Press!
