Milwaukee elementary school deemed total loss after inferno

This story has been updated to include new information.

By KELLI ARSENEAU

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

An early morning fire Tuesday, June 30, tore through a south side Milwaukee elementary school, incinerating large portions of the building and prompting a five-alarm response.

Calls for the fire came in around 3 a.m., Milwaukee Fire Chief Aaron Lipski said. Initial reports were uncertain about where the fire was located, due to heavy smoke in the area, but once on scene, firefighters determined it was at Lincoln Avenue School, 1817 W. Lincoln Ave.

Lipski said the school did not have fire sprinklers. School officials confirmed there are no automatic sprinklers in the building, but said the building’s fire alarm and the district’s security service notified school officials of the fire.

Firefighters initially tried to fight the fire inside the building, which was built in 1917, but determined it was unsafe, Lipski said.

“They started having fire burning right through the floor underneath them … then all of a sudden, commanders outside see heavy fire blowing through the roof, and they decided nah, [the fire is] in too many different spots,” he said.

Instead, firefighters used aerial hoses and other “heavy weaponry” to combat the flames from the exterior of the building, Lipski said. As of about noon Tuesday, the bulk of the fire had been extinguished.

School deemed a total loss, Milwaukee Fire Department says

Guadalupe Ramírez, 42, woke up around three in the morning to black smoke surrounding her home on South 17th street and North Lincoln Avenue, down the block from the Lincoln Avenue School.

The smell of the smoke drew her out to the street where neighbors had already started to gather, worried their homes would catch fire.

“We couldn’t see — it was all black,” Ramírez said. “It was scary, the smell was really bad.”

The school hosts a summer program that provides free meals for children of families who have low income, and several of her neighbors have children who are enrolled in the school. Now, Ramírez said she’s unsure how those families will get the resources they need.

A newer addition to the building, a two-story section on the school’s north end, remained untouched by the fire, with the help of crews at the scene, Lipski said.

However, he said the rest of the school is likely a total loss. He added that the department so far has not been able to determine how or where the fire originated in the building.

No one was injured in the fire, Lipski said.

Most MPS schools do not have automatic sprinkler systems, officials say

MPS officials at a Tuesday morning news conference said most district schools, including Lincoln Avenue, do not have automatic sprinklers.

Only about 20 of 140 MPS school buildings have fire sprinkler systems, interim Chief Operating Officer Michael Turza told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. MPS Deputy Superintendent Michael Harris said the district’s school buildings are, on average, 85 years old and were constructed before fire sprinkler systems were required.

Jose Favela, 25, of Milwaukee woke up at 3 a.m. to the smell of smoke. He then notified his parents, who were also asleep.

Favela said he noticed a couple of fireworks going off while the firefighters were responding to the fire. He didn’t know how long the fireworks had been going off before then.

Assistant Milwaukee Fire Chief Darin Peterburs said the department is still investigating the cause of the fire, but the blaze has brought renewed attention to the age of the district’s schools and a growing list of deferred maintenance projects that have been postponed due to budget constraints.

“We are grateful that no one was in the building and no one was hurt,” Lincoln Avenue Principal Damaris Ayala said in a statement.

Milwaukee Recreation shared on Facebook that summer programming held at Lincoln Avenue School’s Community Learning Center will be moved to Hayes Bilingual School, 971 W. Windlake Ave., through July 31.

Rene Adan, 42, owner of Paleteria Yayo, a Mexican popsicle store, said he woke up at seven in the morning to dozens of missed calls from neighbors and employees about the fire.

When he arrived at his shop on South 18th and West Lincoln Avenue, his freezers and store equipment were covered in black soot. Debris from the fire surrounded his business, and the top of his building was hosed down by firefighters to prevent the fire from spreading due to flying debris.

As Adan’s store is across the street from the Lincoln Avenue School, he had partnered with the school to provide popsicles for events in the past, and the school’s families were regular patrons of his business.

“It’s very sad, now the kids have no school, they have no place to go,” Adan said. “This is hurting our community really bad.”

Heat wave affected fire response, MFD says

The blaze comes amid a sweltering, dayslong heat wave in Milwaukee and the surrounding areas. The punishing heat affected how firefighters could battle the fire, Lispski said, forcing them to operate in shorter work cycles.

It is the latest multi-alarm fire to ignite in Milwaukee. Fires are ranked in severity by the number of alarms called for them – from one to five – with five being the highest. Each alarm tier designates the number and type of apparatus dispatched to address a particular fire. Five-alarm fires are typically rare and entail a huge response.

Milwaukee has seen an increase in multi-alarm fires this year, Lipski said. But it’s unclear what, if anything, such an increase is attributable to since all the fires seem to be caused by different things, he added.