Firefighters Battling School Fire Reported Water Supply Problems in Utah

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Firefighters battling the six-alarm fire at Wasatch Junior High School had problems with both the amount of water available and with the water pressure, said Unified Fire Authority Capt. Gaylord Scott.

''Water being fed to this area is not doing the job,'' he said. ''We shouldn't have to guess if we have the water when we get to a scene. We were behind the eight ball when we got here.''

The normal water pressure firefighters get from hydrants is 1,500 to 2,000 gallons per minute, Scott said. At one point Monday some firefighters were getting less than 700 gallons per minute, he said.

Scott said that while new fire hydrants are connected with an 8-to 10-inch water main, the hydrants surrounding the school in Holladay were all fed by 4- to 6-inch mains.

''Sure, they would've liked more water; in every fire, you'd like to have more water,'' said LeRoy Hooton, director of public utilities for Salt Lake City, which serves the area.

He said valves were opened elsewhere to bring more water down from higher reservoirs.

Jeff Niermeyer, deputy director of public utilities, said computer models that generate the flow levels that systems should produce indicated that hydrants in the area were running at full capacity.

He said that combined, the hydrants should produce a flow rate of 3,000 gallons per minute. However, as fire engines hooked up to more hydrants, flow rates were significantly decreased.

''It limits the total amount of flow that you get out of an individual hydrant,'' Niermeyer said.

Firefighters were also forced to deal with the size of openings on the hydrants themselves. The area is equipped with older hydrants, which have smaller openings than newer ones.

The school did not have an indoor fire sprinkler system or fire walls in the attic because those were not required under the fire code when the school was built in 1959.

Scott said he didn't know whether the outcome would have been any different even with a better water supply.

The fire is believed to have started in the school's media room. Principal Doug Bingham said a fire alarm went off in the building, and the fire was found coming from a computer server in the media center.

Scott said that because of the fire's rapid spread, investigators weren't convinced that a fire in the computer server could have taken off that quickly. However, he said they still believed that the fire was accidental.

The fire spread to the library and then to the gymnasium.

About 150 firefighters from every agency in Salt Lake County assisted with the fire.

No damage estimate has been and Granite School District officials have not decided what they will do with the pupils when the school year begins Aug. 29.

Information from: Deseret Morning News