March 08--Just under 200 students at St. Lawrence Seminary were evacuated and then allowed to return to their dorms after a 5-alarm fire at the boarding school in Fond du Lac County Saturday.
School Spokesman Philip Van Ermen said Saturday that all students -- about 185 to 190 -- were safe, and that nobody was injured in the fire that broke out early Saturday at the nation's oldest Catholic high school seminary in the town of Mt. Calvary.
The blaze broke out around 5:30 a.m. in St. Joseph Hall, a section of the building used for offices and classrooms, and did not spread to the main building, said Mt. Calvary Fire Chief Mark Petrie.
"That section is a total loss," said Petrie.
It took the work of firefighters responding from as far away as Manitowoc and Winnebago County to get the blaze under control at the boarding high school for boys. It was extinguished by mid-morning Saturday.
The cause of the blaze remains under investigation, Petrie said.
St. Lawrence Seminary was the subject of a 2010 profile in the Journal Sentinel.
Founded by the Capuchin religious order in 1860, the school draws students from around the nation and the world. It's one of just a handful of free-standing seminary high schools still operating in the United States -- down from more than 100 in the 1960s.
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