Union Middle School To Reopen After Electrical Fire
Oct 28, 2019, 10:18 PM | Updated: 10:35 pm
SANDY, Utah — Union Middle School will be back open to students Tuesday morning after an electrical fire closed the campus to students for three days. Canyons School District officials said the fire was started by a charging station in a classroom on the second floor.
“It was contained to one sixth grade social studies classroom but what we’re finding is that there is a lot of smoke damage we just didn’t see,” Jeff Haney, spokesperson for Canyons School District.
Smoke soot filled the building and restoration crews have been working ever since to clear the air and clean up what the fire left behind.
“The entire building was covered in soot,” Haney said. “We’ve had to go inch by inch in this building that is 150,000 square feet and clean it.”
Haney said crews have also been going through lockers to clean and recover items covered in soot.
“They have gone locker to locker, identified the items and put those items in a bag or box, identify what locker it is and store it,” he said.
Since the air quality has been so poor in the building, students were forced to stay home.
“From what we’ve heard, students have not been heartbroken that they have not had to come to school but it’s getting to the point where the parents want the kids back to school,” Haney said. “And of course we want the kids to go back to school, they are not learning if they are not here.”
On Monday, the district tested air quality on the first floor and got the ‘okay’ to hold classes. Starting Tuesday, Union Middle will hold school in split sessions, with sixth graders and half of the seventh-grade students attending in the morning and eighth graders and the other half of seventh graders attending in the afternoon. This will last for three-to-four weeks while crews complete clean-up efforts.
“We are doing the best that we can, providing the best possible education that we can, given the circumstances,” Haney said.