Heated Situation: District operations and maintenance team works to restore the third-floor science wing after greenhouse fire

Maintenance continues on the third-floor science wing after a small fire started in the greenhouse around 8 p.m. on Oct. 28 — no students, faculty or animals were injured.

To mitigate smoke damage, air scrubbers — machines used to purify air — were installed on the morning of Oct. 29 in the science hallway as well as in the room connected to the greenhouse, room 325, according to Principal Jason Peres.

“Our operations and maintenance team immediately came over and installed that equipment so that we made sure that our air was clean,” Peres said. “They’re going to run [the air scrubbers] all weekend, and by [this] Tuesday, we should [be able to] remove them.”

The fire began on the night of Oct. 28 after a heating lamp, knocked over by the environmental education tortoises, fell into a plastic bin of Aspen bedding, according to environmental education teacher Rusty Debey.

Minor damage was done to the greenhouse, and the night custodial staff quickly extinguished the fire.

“There was smoke in the greenhouse, office area, hallway and my classroom next door,” Debey said. “My ceramic heat lamp is burnt, I had to remove all the Aspen bedding and then [the district maintenance team] replaced all the ceiling tiles in [my] office area because they were all saturated with smoke.”

In addition to repairing smoke damage, district plumbers replaced insulation around the nearby school water pipeline that had melted.

Since Wednesday, Debey has relocated all his classes to the library, and the surrounding third-floor science classes have continued as usual.

“It’s a change of venue, [but] I’m still doing the same thing,” Debey said. “[Students are] still going to be getting the same lecture notes, they’re still going to be doing the assignments, just somewhere else.”

Despite moving more slowly the morning after the fire, Debey says both tortoises are doing fine and students should be able to return to his classroom next week.

“I will say that our operations team was outstanding, and really came through for us in a big way, which allowed us to have classes in that wing,” Peres said.