Bethel school fire report shows responders lacked critical information

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.

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