Buy a Photo!
Firefighters wearing respirators walk through the smoke
Wednesday during a fire on the campus of Allan Hancock College. The fire, which started in a small building housing electrical equipment, prompted a campus evacuation. //Bryan Walton/Staff
The Allan Hancock College campus in Santa Maria was evacuated and classes were canceled Wednesday afternoon after a fire broke out in a small building housing electrical equipment.
The fire was estimated to have caused more than $50,000 in damage to the equipment in the building and another $5,000 to the structure.
Fire crews responded around 3 p.m., and found smoke coming from a small cinder block building near Bradley Road. Fire officials suspected a 40-year-old, overheated transformer was the cause of the blaze.
The building houses electrical equipment that supplies power to 90 percent of the school, and officials said the heat of the day and the added strain on the aged equipment were factors in the transformer failure.
The building sits between building H and the Student Center at the corner of Jones Street and Bradley Road.
Santa Maria Fire Battalion Chief Dan Orr took the situation slowly because of the danger posed by electrical fires. Crews waited until power was shut off before extinguishing the fire.
Hancock's system to alert students and faculty of emergency situations was shut down due to the electrical damage, but Hancock President Jose Ortiz said school officials were able to connect with the Santa Maria Police Department and get text messages sent out alerting students of the situation.
The transformers in the building are old and contain oil, so crews were concerned about whether the smoke was harmful, but it was a dry transformer that overheated.
Once PG&E arrived to shut down the electrical equipment, firefighters quickly stanched the source of the acrid smoke. An electrical contractor was on the scene to assess the situation,
Ortiz said.
The incident occurred after morning classes had ended and before night began, Ortiz said, so there was not a large number of students and staff on campus.
Hancock spokeswoman Rebecca Alarcio estimated a couple hundred people were evacuated.
The campus was closed due to the outage and evening classes and registration were canceled at all of the college sites, Alarcio said.
Classes were expected to resume today, she said.
The Santa Maria Valley Packers home baseball game also was postponed. The team was to host the Stockton Glory. The game will be played today as part of a doubleheader.
June 19, 2008
Email a friend
Printer friendly