None hurt in small fire at Bridge Elementary, officials say

School officials said no students or employees were hurt by a small fire Friday at Bridge Elementary, which also houses Clendenin Elementary’s students.

Briana Warner, communications director for Kanawha County’s public school system, said a “heat wrap” that was around a pipe that drains condensation from a walk-in freezer shorted out, according to the Pinch Volunteer Fire Department and school system maintenance staff.

Warner said the pipe is inside the kitchen, and the heat wrap is meant to keep the pipe from freezing. She said the school system will be looking at what’s wrong with the part and whether the part is found anywhere else in the county.

She said the last lunch was being served when cooks noticed the smoke around 11:50 a.m. She said smoke was the only visible evidence of the fire.

She said students and staff were evacuated within a minute, firefighters arrived within five minutes and, while the school system sent out a robocall saying the incident would cause buses to run 30 minutes late, firetrucks cleared the parking lot quickly and students were all on buses by 12:45 p.m.

Friday was an early-out day, so the normally expected time for all students to be on buses was 12:30 p.m., Warner said.

Bridge Elementary Principal Maggie Holley said the pipe was more “back in the coolers” than out in the kitchen.

“Anytime you have smoke we’re going to evacuate the building and we did and in under a minute and it was amazing, we have amazing faculty and staff here,” Holley said.

Warner said Vanessa Brown, Clendenin Elementary’s principal, was in the cafeteria at the time of the incident.

Bridge and Clendenin elementaries have 386 students combined, Warner said. Clendenin’s building was damaged in the June 2016 flood.