Sakewew High School remained closed Wednesday following a fire in one of the bathrooms Feb. 7. (Angela Brown/battlefordsNOW Staff)

By Angela Brown

Emergency response

Fire at Sakewew High School under investigation

Feb 12, 2020 | 2:58 PM

Sakewew High School remains closed today after a fire erupted in a second-floor bathroom Friday.

The cause of the fire is under investigation and is deemed suspicious.

Members of the North Battleford Fire Department responded to the blaze at the site located at 11301 Eighth Avenue after receiving a call at about 2 p.m. on Feb. 7.

Fire Chief Lindsay Holm confirmed no one was injured in the incident. While it was a school day, the majority of students were outside of the building when firefighters came to the scene.

“They were in the process of evacuating the school when we got there, so I believe most of the students were out when our fire crews arrived,” Holm said. “With respect to the evacuation, I’m quite pleased with the staff of the school. They did a very good job of following their evacuation plans. They did a great job in making sure all the students were safely evacuated from the structure.”

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Firefighters extinguished the blaze quickly and spent about two hours at the location afterward clearing smoke from the area.

“The biggest thing we had to deal with was the amount of smoke that was inside the structure,” Holm said. “So it took us quite a bit of time to actually ventilate the smoke out of the school.”

Crews managed to contain the fire to the bathroom.

Holm said while it was a small fire, the materials that were burning “issued a pretty heavy, thick, dense black smoke that essentially filled up the top floor of the school.”

It appears some burning plastic material caused the heavy smoke conditions, according to the fire chief.

“The cause of the fire is still under investigation,” Holm said. “I believe it has now been turned over to the RCMP to complete the investigation. We have determined it is a suspicious fire. Because of that, the RCMP will be continuing the investigation from this point forward.”

Holm said there will be some damage to address in the meantime.

“There is going to be some extensive smoke damage on the second floor that is going to need to be dealt with, for sure,” Holm said. “The room itself, the washroom, it did sustain quite a bit of damage, but I believe everything there will be repairable.”

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angela.brown@jpbg.ca

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