West Chicago firefighters received a report of a bathroom fire at Gary School, 130 E. Forest Ave., April 16, Deputy Chief Robert Hodge said. When crews arrived just minutes later, they were startled to find students sitting quietly at their desks with no sign of an evacuation in progress.

Hodge said the small fire, limited to a soap dispenser set on fire by a student, was already out when firetrucks arrived. The charred dispenser, smoke and a foul odor were the only signs of any disturbance. Still, the incident raised questions about why students weren’t immediately evacuated once staff learned there may have been a fire in the bathroom.

“This was somewhat of a hiccup in the process of recognizing when the school needs to be evacuated,” Hodge said. 

Principle Scott Williams said school staff had little time to make a decision on whether to evacuate before the Fire Department arrived.

“Their response time is great,” Williams said. “When they got here, the custodian had just come out and indicated that the fire had been extinguished.”

Williams said he and the Fire Department quickly evaluated the situation and came to a mutual decision not to evacuate.

But district and fire officials said a decision to evacuate the school should have been made as soon as a student reported seeing smoke in the boy’s bathroom, at least five minutes before fire crews arrived.

“I would’ve preferred that there would’ve been a ‘let’s clear the building’ (announcement),” District 33 Superintendent Ed Leman said.

Fire Chief Ron Ackerman said school officials should always leave fire investigation to trained fire personnel.

“What it looks like may not be what it is,” Ackerman said. “That may just be experience talking but we’re in that vocation.”

Leman wondered what might have happened if the student who started the fire had decided to light additional fires while school staff were investigating the bathroom.

Unlike new school buildings, Gary School does not have an automatic fire detection system. Instead, someone must pull a fire alarm to trigger the alert. When students and staff hear the glaring alarm, they all know to evacuate immediately, Leman said.

But that didn’t happen April 16. Instead of calling the Fire Department and automatically pulling the alarm, school officials decided to try to evaluate the fire before evacuating.

Schools regularly practice various drills by being given an emergency scenario and figuring out a response to it. Leman said that although the drills help staff determine what to do in complicated situations, they can also lead to confusion.

“The (drill) scenarios tend to be complex and this (fire) was a relatively simple incident,” Leman said. “People were unintentionally geared toward looking at more serious things.”

School staff may have decided not to evacuate the building because they saw the incident as too insignificant to matter, Leman said.

To remove any confusion, Leman said the district is clearing away the gray areas in the fire procedures. Under the amended rules, staff would sound the alarm at any sign of flames, smoke or fumes.

“We just need to make staff aware that it’s OK to pull the alarm,” Leman said. “It seems like a logical thing, but it didn’t happen.”

Updating the school’s fire system has also been put on the front burner. Leman said the district is looking into the financial and logistical feasibility of installing automatic detection systems at each school to remove some amount human error. The district hasn’t gotten any cost estimates but Leman said even installing detectors at only key locations would be expensive. Only two of the district’s seven school buildings have automatic detectors.

Leman said the student who started the fire was expelled for the remaining of the school year. The student and his family are receiving assistance from county support services. There was no indication the student meant to harm anyone or that he planned any other action.

“We suspect he was crying out for some attention or help,” Leman said. “It’s just unfortunate that this was the way he managed to get it.”