A small fire at Jefferson Village School the morning of Nov. 22 which led to seven area fire departments being paged out was an accidental stove-top fire that was quickly extinguished, according to Jefferson Fire Chief Walter Morris.
Plastic totes set on top of the stove in the school’s life skills room caught fire after the range was accidentally turned on, Morris said.
Life skills teacher Cindy Allen said she pulled the lever to activate the commercial fire suppression system over the stove and turned on the fan in the exhaust hood.
“It came down quick and whatever was left [of the fire] was gone,” Allen said.
“The system did its job, it was activated by the teacher – she did exactly the right thing,” Morris said.
After hauling the totes and the stove outside of the building, Morris said the wall was examined with thermal imaging and the department opened up part of the wall to ensure the fire was completely out.
Smoke barriers inside the school closed automatically to isolate the incident, Morris said.
After the fire department had left, JVS Principal Peter Gallace said no classes would be using the classrooms in either floor of the wing where the fire occurred for at least the morning hours, even though Morris had cleared all but the life skills room for use.
Gallace said the fire occurred about 15 minutes prior to when students would have begun arriving at the school, so he contacted the head school bus driver, Scott Higgins, to have all the buses wait at All Seasons Automotive to avoid congestion at the school and avoid upsetting the students.
The incident only delayed the students’ arrival by about 10 minutes, and they were unloaded and went into other areas of the school, Gallace said.
The page for the fire went out at about 7:40 for Jefferson Fire Department and automatic mutual aid from Waldoboro, Nobleboro, Somerville, Washington, Windsor, and Whitefield, but the other departments were canceled before any reached the school, Morris said.
“We had two trucks on the road right away, so I canceled the mutual aid right away once I saw the fire was under control,” Morris said.
A third Jefferson truck was also en route from southern Jefferson, he said.