BETHEL – Bethel firefighters struggling to put out a devastating school blaze in November lacked a critical piece of information: the location of a connection to the building's sprinkler system.
Those standard connections allow crews to hook up a hose and increase the flow of water to sprinklers or ensure a supply at all in case a holding tank runs dry, which can happen in places like Bethel where piped water only serves part of town.
On the morning of Nov. 3, with no building plan in hand, firefighters couldn't find a sprinkler connection at the old Kilbuck school building. They figured there wasn't one. After an hour, a new state report says, the sprinkler reservoir went dry. Then the fire took off.
That's one of the revelations from an investigation completed in mid-December by the state fire marshal's office into the cause of the fire, which destroyed a Yup'ik immersion school and severely damaged an alternative boarding school housed in the same building.
Had the firefighters been able to feed the sprinklers, it might have made a difference, deputy fire marshal Bob Plumb said he was told by Bethel Fire Chief Bill Howell.
In the end, investigators weren't able to pinpoint a cause. A couple of tips haven't yet led anywhere. One came from an anonymous Bethel tipster who sent a mysterious package to Juneau claiming that a faulty heating element was to blame.
Undetermined cause, the fire marshal concluded.
Plumb, who led the state investigation that was cut short by asbestos in the building debris, said he wasn't faulting the firefighters, but simply describing the circumstances.
His report, dated Dec. 15, outlines the fire department connection issue and he discussed it further when asked.
"The chief said to me that if there had been a (hose connection), they might have been able to (stop) it. But he didn't think there was one. And then we found it," Plumb said in an interview Wednesday. "It had the potential to have contained the fire to a small area until they could have put it out."
Howell, the fire chief, said he didn't recall saying hooking to the connection could have made a difference. In fact, he said Thursday that he questions such a conclusion, given the fire's path in areas out of reach of the sprinklers.
"We had a huge fire underneath the building and it moved through the walls and the spaces that aren't protected by the sprinkler system -- it moved through those spaces into the ceiling," Howell said, describing flames inside the dropped ceiling. "It's my opinion the sprinkler system in this case was not going to be effective because the fire was not in a place where the sprinkler system protects it."
If the fire had started in a classroom, a fully functioning sprinkler could have doused flames, he said. But this fire was different. And it burned for a while before the sprinklers went off to begin with, according to the report.
Much of the town relies on hauled water and the Kilbuck school building was on a well, with a single 6,000-gallon storage tank supplying the sprinklers.
"The sprinkler system ran until the reservoir tank went dry, approximately an hour later, and then the fire just grew," the report said.
Fire crews did connect a hose to the school's drinking water supply, under the theory that might supply the sprinklers. But the water overflowed into storm drains, the state report said.
The state fire marshal's office in Anchorage found Kilbuck school building plans that showed a fire department connection on the building's south wing, near the intersection with the main part of the building. Investigators at the scene were able to find a remnant of the fire department connection in the debris. The Lower Kuskokwim School District maintenance staff didn't even know there was one, Howell said.
On modern buildings, fire department connections are clearly marked, often with giant letters saying "FDC." Not this one.
"It was hidden from view," the fire chief said.
Tips but not answers
The Bethel Fire Department was alerted even before the school fire alarms went off. A man walking by the school called 911 on Nov. 3 at 3:31 a.m. Christopher Trevor Kelly told investigators that he had been partying and was walking to the airport when he saw smoke coming from under the school, the fire marshal report said. The yellow foam around the pipes was burning, and the fire grew fast, he told investigators.
Some of the boarding school students who were evacuated from dorms reported seeing three people coming out from under or around the school before the fire department arrived. But fire investigators weren't able to talk to the students directly while in Bethel and passed the information to police for follow-up.
Bethel Police Chief Andre Achee -- reached while working patrol on a short-handed New Year's Eve afternoon -- said he didn't have immediate information on what happened to the tip. It wasn't clear from the third-hand report exactly when the students saw the people or what they were doing, Plumb said.
Another avenue concerned a tip about heat trace, or wire that encircles pipes in the Bush to prevent freezing.
A few weeks after the fire, the Juneau Division of Fire and Life Safety received a package from Bethel with no return address.
"The package contained a note stating that the fire had been caused by improper installation of heat trace and that the control device had not been installed correctly," the fire marshal's report said. When the temperature dropped to freezing, the control went to full power, without any regulation of that, the note said. The package contained a controller as well.
The temperature in Bethel the morning of the fire would have been cold enough to activate the heat trace, the fire marshal report said. Investigators couldn't confirm whether the utilidor in that area had the heating element, though. They had to cut their investigation short once they determined that the building contained asbestos.
School maintenance crews said there wasn't heat trace on pipes in the south wing but other piping could have had it, Plumb said.
The Lower Kuskokwim School District's insurance adjuster estimated the loss at $19 million, the report said.
Sprinkler connections
Howell, who became chief in November 2014, said that even before the Kilbuck fire, he had instigated a project to survey buildings and facilities for hazards such as fuel tanks and safety features.
The goal is to create plans that will enable crews to immediately locate key hazards as well as fire department connections to sprinklers, Howell said. Many fire departments carry such documents in fire vehicles, Plumb said.
Bethel is working to advance from its roots as a small-town department. The project is slow going because of short staffing, Howell said.
The Bethel Fire Department runs 24-7 with six paid staff members and about 30 volunteers, about half of whom are active. It has lost one staff position in the last year even as calls for help are growing, Howell said. Only the chief and the fire captain have more than a year of experience.
Medic calls have risen by more than 50 percent since 2010, just after Bethel's vote in 2009 to go wet, though without legal sales of alcohol. The status has allowed residents to bring in unlimited amounts through their luggage or Bush orders from urban stores. Legal sales are now on the way, a big concern for the fire chief.
"Most people suspect that it is going to have a negative effect on public safety," Howell said.
As it is, keeping up with day-to-day calls, equipment maintenance, building inspections and training needs is a challenge, he said.
"I would love to say that next year at this time we will have a solid, well-developed, pre-fire planning system in place," Howell said. But "we are just struggling to keep vehicles going out the door."
Howell said he is hoping to add a position or contract out for the building surveys. Plumb said the state Division of Fire and Life Safety also is down a number of positions.
While Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, the Yup'ik immersion school, was flattened in the fire and the Kuskokwim Learning Academy boarding school was heavily damaged, firefighters were able to save part of the structure.
It contained unique Yup'ik curriculum materials that had been developed by teachers over many years.