Shop fire closes Wakefield vocational school

WAKEFIELD – School is cancelled for the rest of the week at a Wakefield vocational school after a two-alarm fire in the school’s carpentry shop severely damaged the roof above the shop and sent smoke spilling into the rest of the school Tuesday evening.No classes were held Wednesday, and there will be no classes Thursday or Friday at Northeast Metro Tech. Monday, school will re-open two hours later than normal as school officials clean up soot that spread into six classrooms when the fire started, according to a notice on the school’s website.Wakefield Fire Department Chief Michael Sullivan said the fire, which is still under investigation but he believes is accidental, started at about 5:20 p.m. Tuesday in the carpentry shop. No one was injured, but he estimated damage at $500,000.”It was a pretty significant fire,” he said.Sullivan said at least one teacher and several other people were working in the shop when it’s likely that a spark from a piece of equipment got caught up in the shop’s saw-dust collection system, a series of ducts, and spread to the roof, igniting flammable insulation in the roof.Sullivan said the fire spread quickly and destroyed the roof above the shop.Smoke from the fire, exacerbated by the smoldering plastic materials in the roof, quickly spread into the rest of the school, where a varsity basketball game was taking place and possibly several night classes were beginning, Sullivan said.”It might as well have been during the school day for the amount of cars that were in the parking lot,” he said.The school’s fire-alarm system went off, and when firefighters arrived, the parking lot was filled with people who had evacuated the school, he said.”The school was very occupied at the time,” he said.Firefighters spent the next five hours battling the fire, a labor-intensive process that Sullivan said required firefighters to peel back the roof and remove the duct system to get to the burning insulation.Most of the responding firefighters returned to the Wakefield Fire Department by 10:40 p.m., but Sullivan left one engine at the school overnight in case anything else sparked.He said the entire roof of the carpentry shop needs to be replaced and there is possible smoke damage in the rest of the school, leading to the decision to close the school this week.”It was pretty clear they couldn’t have school today because they’re in clean-up mode,” he said Wednesday.School officials are grateful no one was injured and that the fire department responded so quickly, said Superintendent Ted Nickole, of the Regional Vocational School District, which Northeast Metro Tech is a part of.”It could have been a lot worse; they did a great job,” he said. “They really averted a potential disaster because they were so quick.”The shop itself will be closed much longer for repairs, prompting offers from nearby technical schools to accommodate shop students, Nicole said.He said the damage, while extensive, is small in comparison to the worst-case scenario.”No one got hurt,” he said. ” ? That’s the thing you can’t replace, so we count our blessings that way.”Amber Parcher can be reached at [email protected].