A gym stage light
– left on over the weekend after a Grad Night party Friday – was
the cause, fire department officials believe, of an early Monday
morning blaze that broke out at Gilroy High School. The fire
charred the middle support beam of the GHS gymnasium and filled the
building with plumes of smoke.
A gym stage light – left on over the weekend after a Grad Night party Friday – was the cause, fire department officials believe, of an early Monday morning blaze that broke out at Gilroy High School. The fire charred the middle support beam of the GHS gymnasium and filled the building with plumes of smoke. Officials scrambled Monday to evaluate the extensiveness of the damage which will impact summer school physical education classes and a $465,000 roof maintenance project planned over the next few months. “The job of replacing the roof was going to happen anyway, but the work has grown extensively now because of (the fire), that’s for sure,” said Charlie Van Meter, Gilroy Unified School District’s facilities director. “The district has insurance for stuff like this, fortunately.”Gilroy fire officials did not have an estimate of the damage or an official cause of the fire by press time. Rather, excessive heat from the light apparently set the wood beam ablaze, Capt. Ed Bozzo said.“The light was probably left on since Grad Night, but we’re still investigating this,” Bozzo said.
Around 6:30 a.m. a school custodian noticed the blaze and called the fire department and Jeff Gopp, GUSD’s maintenance and operations manager.
It’s unknown how long the blaze burned prior to the custodian’s arrival. Gopp said the wood beams are laminated with a flame resistant material. Had they not been, the gym could have suffered a severe amount of damage.
Plenty of flammable decorations left over from Grad Night filled the gym less than 48 hours prior to the blaze. The items were cleared out, however, before the fire.
The wood beams were still smoldering hours after they were aflame. The flames rekindled after firefighters tore a hole in the roof to ventilate the smoky gym. The makeshift vent gave the blaze more oxygen to burn, but firefighters quickly extinguished the flames.
Firefighters spent the rest of the morning tearing down the charred portion of the beam. It’s likely the entire support beam will need to be replaced. It is one of about eight similar beams that keep the gym roof from falling. The roof did not appear to be caving in this morning.
“I’ve contacted a structural engineer whose going to evaluate this for us,” Van Meter said. “We won’t really know what has to be done until he’s finished taking a look at it.”
Roughly 220 students are enrolled for physical education courses that will take place in the gym during the summer break.
Mt. Madonna Principal John Perales heads up the summer session at the high school. He was on site Monday taking the incident in stride, but fully aware of its ramifications.
“There are a lot of kids who were going to use this,” Perales said Monday as he paced the gym floor. “We’ll work something out.”
