By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
A bolt of lightning struck a vacant kindergarten classroom Saturday at Bronson Elementary School night igniting a fire in the roof that was quickly contained by Bronson Fire Rescue.
One of the school’s new teachers, Tasha Beckham, was working at the school in preparation for Monday’s classes when she saw smoke after the lightning strike and called 911 for assistance.
The entire building, housing kindergarten and English as a Second Language classrooms, was closed at the time the storm hit. No students or teachers were present in the building.
A small army of volunteers including parents, teachers from BES and neighboring Bronson Middle High School, and community members moved classroom materials Sunday to empty classrooms and portables.
One of the empty classrooms is for gifted students. Principal Marlene Wiggins said she hasn’t been able to fill the vacancy for a gifted teacher. Therefore, the classroom was available as an empty classroom space.
Wiggins said it won’t be a perfect situation when children arrive for classes Monday because the kindergarten classrooms will be scattered around the campus. On the bright side, classes can resume on schedule.
School Board member Cameron Asbell was on site helping teachers and parents move classroom materials on Sunday. He said it’s not unusual in Bronson to see an army of volunteers helping out in an emergency. It’s just Bronson.
“What you’re seeing with all these community members coming together to help out isn’t something new. This is Bronson. People show up whenever they’re needed to help out.”
The flip side of the lightning strike is that there were no injuries and the fire wasn’t allowed to spread because it was called in quickly and Bronson firefighters responded just as fast.
Bronson Fire Chief Dennis Russell said all the fire damage was contained to the roof. He said the lightning destroyed the shingles and the plywood beneath the shingles, but the insulation stopped it from going directly into the classroom.
Russell said when he arrived he didn’t smell any smoke in the adjoining classrooms, but he said there is a walkway for air conditioning and heating work between the ceiling and the roof that could have carried smoke to other parts of the building.
Russell said electric wiring may have been damaged when the fire crept up the roof toward the peak. He said firefighters also had to cut a hole in the roof about 4 feet wide and 15-20 feet long to contain the fire.
The lightning strike left Bronson residents without water. The town’s water tower and wells are located on a piece of property adjoining the elementary school property.
Bronson Mayor Partin said the lightning strike caused the breakers to flip off and shut down the town’s water supply. A boil water notice from the town said the tower was struck by lightning. Russell said he hadn’t been informed of a direct lightning strike on the tower.
“But there was a lot of lightning in that area,” he said.
The lightning penetrated an area of the classroom roof more than six feet below the peak, which means it blasted through a section of the roof where there was no metal.
Russell said he has seen lightning cut through the roofs of homes in the past. He said lightning has so much force and electricity that it can cut through the roofing.
Wiggins, the school’s new principal, said children in the school would have been moved to a safe area if classes had been in session and school officials had been given weather a alert about approaching bad weather.
School maintenance officials will take a closer look at the school building Monday to assess the extent of the damage. Insurance representatives will be notified of the lightning strike.
The storm appeared to be a relatively small weather cell that produced an enormous amount of lightning strikes in a short period of time but not much rainfall. Russell said he got the call at 8:07 p.m.
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Enterprise Reporting by Terry Witt August 21, 2022; Posted August 21, 2022
