The Northfield Middle & High School was closed last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday because of a fire in the boiler room before the start of the school day on Tuesday.

School had already been declared closed for the day because at approximately 6:30 a.m. maintenance worker Wayde Reed reported to the Director of Maintenance, Jeff Haggett, that the boiler was not working properly.

Mr. Haggett immediately called Superintendent Dr. Michelle Fagan and she decided to close school for reasons of safety. In addition to calling the standard places such as radio stations she put the school’s new phone “Alert” contact system into play. She recorded a message, hit a button and the message was relayed to all parents and staff members automatically.

The school Principal, Tom McKone, received the message but he came in to check things out and arrived at 7:20.

The decision to close was a safe one, about 40 minutes after the announcement we had a fire” Mr. McKone said. “ When I arrived I saw Jeff Haggett headed to his office.

Wayde came out and said ‘We’ve got a fire”. Jeff immediately called 911 and I went in and cleared out the people that were in the building.”

Mr. McKone had high praise for the fire Department. “The Fire Department was great. They arrived quickly and contained the fire to a small area in the boiler room. They were very professional,” Mr. McKone said.

The students may have had the day off but work was just beginning for several members of the staff.

Superintendent Fagan, Business Manager Wayne Shepard and Jeff Haggett all had a lot of calls to make. “We have a plan in place for just who to call I case of an emergency of this type. We have to contact the Fire Marshall, the insurance company, the building inspectors, the air quality inspectors and the boiler company. Jeff, Wayne, and Michelle did a lot. Credit Jeff with having done everything that needed to be done up to that point. All the maintenance records and paperwork were in order, so that speeded up the process,” said Mr. McKone.

The process was a thorough one. The boiler & boiler room of course were inspected. The ductwork was inspected. And the air quality was checked.

“We didn’t have smoke in the building but we did detect some odors, Mr.

McKone said. “But we wanted to make sure everything was clear.

Everything was declared safe by late Tuesday afternoon but the man who inspected the Chimney said he thought everything was OK but he recommended that we should get a second opinion so we decided to err on the side of caution and also give the air a chance to freshen so we called school on Wednesday.”

On Thursday Morning at the start of period 1 Mr. McKone made an announcement to the entire student body describing what had happened and what steps were taken and to assure them that the building was safe. “And to quell any rumors that may have sprung up,” he said.

This was no free lunch for the students. The good news is they got two days off in the middle of January. The bad news is that those two days will have to be made up in June.