CFTA Fire Causes Destruction,Displaces Classes
The fire on March 28th at 3:00 am in Trish’s classroom destroyed most of the CFTA’s first floor, including, but not limited to, students’ art and teachers’ personal belongings. It was an electrical fire caused by a surge protector emitting sparks and lighting up the cabinet in front of it. The fire department was notified when the alarm was triggered. Maintenance was also called to the scene and had to drive to school as soon as possible to help.
The fire was put out within 10 minutes: the fire department and maintenance team got to the scene just in time. The fire did cause some damage; however, fire did not cause the majority of the damage to the building, as it was contained to one shelving unit in the classroom. While the fire’s damage itself ended up being small, the entire first floor of the CFTA is undergoing repairs, Bridget Guerra, Director of Operations, said, “The majority of the damage was mostly due to the water. The water from the sprinklers and the firefighters and fire extinguishers that they used … that caused a lot of damage. And then the smoke and the soot sticking to everything.”
Trish Ludovici, fine art teacher, said, “Although it was a really tiny fire, I still essentially lost my whole classroom.” She lost many of her belongings, such as personal art projects, supplies, and her books. She said, “One of the saddest things is I've lost all my books. Books are really important to me.”
These cannot be recovered and returned because of the type of material they are made of. Bridget said, “If you can imagine things that are super porous, like paper, cardboard, or any soft goods. It's really hard to get that smell and toxins out of that. So some things we did have to dispose of, and we'll have to replace.”
Trish’s classroom was filled with the art of current and past students, her art, supplies, and much more. These materials meant a lot to students and teachers. Trish explained that her classroom also acted as her studio and said, “In that space, I understood and continued to learn all the different problems and nuances of the building. I just figured out ways to work with it to the best of my ability. And I have a deep love for my little witch hut up on the hill.” The fire was especially upsetting for Trish, as it resurfaced troubling memories. She said, “It was really scary for me because my house had burned down when I was 12. I had spent many years not really thinking about it… All of a sudden, I was thinking about that and all the things I had lost.”
Trish’s room meant a lot to a lot of people, and so did the other rooms on the first floor of the CFTA. Laura Ellis, the dance teacher, has been working at Athenian for 31 years and had input when they were first designing the CFTA theater and dance studio. Laura said, “I got the opportunity to work with architects to design the studio. When you look in the mirrors, you see through the windows into the creek and into the beautiful environment. You'll see deer walking through and squirrels on the fence peeking in, and the warmth of the space.”
The dance studio is used by many people for different projects. Laura said, “So many incredible student projects have happened over the years in that dance space. It's the starting point for the choreography for the musicals.”
If you have spent time in the dance studio or have visited, you know that you must take off your outside shoes to walk on the dance floor. Laura said, “We have dance styles where students are in their bare feet. So if other folks who utilize the space are not mindful, they bring in germs from outside.”
She explained why the floor is special: “It is a sprung floor. It's a particular style of floor that allows for low and high impact to happen without causing injury… It's an expensive floor to put in, but it is the standard for doing the best practice,” Laura said.
While the fire did not spread to the dance room, the walls and floor got damaged from the sprinkler water. The dance floor was severely damaged.
Bridget said, “We had to basically take out almost everything that was inside the dance room. We had to pull up the dance floor, some of the wall, and in the art studio, almost everything was taken out.”
The occurrence of this fire confused many in the community because the fire inspector had visited the campus just days before the fire happened. Bridget said, “What happens when the fire inspector comes is they go through the entire campus and they flag things like, ‘Hey, we should move these items away from the fire extinguisher,’ or ‘this shouldn't be plugged in here’. Or make sure that students, faculty, and staff know the safety protocols. They kind of give us guidelines. They flag anything that is an immediate issue and needs to be resolved. Then they'll come back to make sure that we've done all those things. They’re meant to let us know of things that we should be keeping an eye on, and if there's immediate safety issues going on.”
When they visited, Bridget said, “They didn't flag anything that was related to that [the fire],” such as clutter, any overcrowded surge protectors, or the fact that the CFTA is an older building. “Although it seems like we've had a lot of fires and everything, luckily, I'm glad that no one got hurt, number one. And number two, I always use these as learning opportunities to be like, okay, is there anything that we could have done to prevent this? And if not, was there anything that we could have done to make it less damaging? And what are some educational components that we can add to either students or our staff and faculty?”
As for the next steps, Bridget focused on the potential upsides.
“It's a good opportunity to think about whether this space was really fitting the students and what they need, and how we can reconstruct it so that it does. Do we need more shelving? Do we need another sink? How do we provide better storage and stuff like that? That is definitely something that they're going to be thinking about before we move forward with reconstructing and renovating it.”
