School evacuated, faulty heat trace suspected
Kevin Wilson
Northern News Services
Inuvik (Mar 16/01) - A stubborn blaze inside Inuvik's utilidors sent clouds of smoke billowing into the sky Tuesday afternoon and forced the evacuation of Samuel Hearne Secondary School.
Firefighters were faced with not knowing exactly where the fire was located.
Fire Chief Al German said the thirteen firefighters on the scene had to first protect other buildings from catching fire before attacking the fire.
"Our first attack was to protect the school and our second was to protect the surrounding buildings," he said.
Using axes and power saws, they attempted for over two hours to locate the source of the blaze.
At one point, the original fire was extinguished, but another fire flared up several metres away. German said the insulation foam around the pipes in the utilidor worked "like a wick" as it burned.
"It was hard to get at," said German. "The utilidors are built to keep kids out, and if they keep kids out, they keep firefighters out, too."
Students and teachers at Samuel Hearne were evacuated as the smoke began to leak into the school. Carson Atkinson, Principal of SHSS, said the school chose to "err on the side of caution."
Outside the Northern store, a group of Hearne students milled about, enjoying the sun and the afternoon off.
"They put on an announcement telling us to leave," said ninth-grader Dwayne Drescher. When he left the school, smoke was billowing out of the utilidor, "and on the other side, there was flaming."
According to Atkinson, a thick, "acrid-smelling" haze was noticeable inside the school. Evacuation, he said, "was the only appropriate response under the circumstances."
Amanda Lennie, another student, said the school "smelled like sewage."
RCMP responded to the blaze for crowd control purposes but "were not required for anything else," according to Corporal Jeff Hurry of the RCMP Inuvik Detachment.
Drescher said he heard from friends that, "there were quite a few people out at the utilidor playing with fire," but German says that the department has already identified a faulty heat trace at a nearby public works building as the culprit.
