Careless smoking sparked blaze
Materials that caught on fire at Lakefield school construction site had been piled on ground instead of carted away
LAKEFIELD -- A fire Monday night at the Lakefield District Public School construction site was likely caused by careless smoking, said the fire chief.
Selwyn Township Fire Chief Gord Jopling said no one was hurt in the fire. He didn’t have a damage estimate on Tuesday.
But the fire broke out just after 7 p.m. at the Bridge Street school in the area where the intermediate wing is being torn down. Asphalt shingles, lumber and insulation caught on fire, resulting in a smoky blaze.
All those materials had been piled on the ground, Jopling said, when they should have been carted away or at least contained.
He said he thinks some smoking material was tossed on the ground and smouldered for awhile before the fire broke out.
“Really, you shouldn’t be smoking and working on that site,” he said.
Selwyn firefighters battled the blaze for several hours and finally had it out around 9:45 p.m. Monday.
The site, the former Lakefield District Secondary and Intermediate School, does not have students attending this month because it is being convertedinto the new public elementary school for the Lakefield area.
LDSS closed as a high school at the end of the 2015-2016 school year in June 2016 but the facility’s intermediate wing continued to house Grades 7 and 8 students for the 201617 school year.
Renovations were supposed to have created a new junior kindergarten to Grade 8 elementary school for the start of the 2017-18 school year this month. But construction delays have pushed the expected completion date to December.
Junior kindergarten to Grade 8 public school students in the Lakefield area have been attending Ridpath Junior Public School across town on Ermatinger Street, where portables were set up over the summer to accommodate the extra Grade 7 and 8 students until the new school is completed.
Ridpath will then close once the students move into the new Lakefield District Public School.
The intermediate wing is being torn down because the space is not needed for the new school and no community group stepped forward in time to lease the 32,000-squarefoot space.
The $6.38-million renovation project also involves building a daycare facility at the school.
Scarborough-based Steelcore Construction Ltd. was awarded the contract for the renovations, while OSC Construction is sub-contracted for the intermediate wing demolition.