Students to attend other area schools after Danforth Tech fire

Students will have to attend other schools in the area for at least the rest of the week after a fire broke out at Danforth Collegiate & Technical Institute on Wednesday morning, the Toronto District School Board tells CityNews.

Students in Grade 9 and 10 will be going to Eastern Commerce Collegiate at their regularly scheduled time, while students in Grade 11 and 12 will be going to Monarch Park Collegiate. Special education students will be attending Wilkinson Junior Public School, and school buses will pick them up.

The board said it will reassess on the weekend, so check its website for updates on when Danforth Tech will reopen.

No students or staff were injured after the fire at the school in East York, which needed 80 firefighters and 20 trucks to extinguish.

The firefighters credited teachers for getting students out even before they arrived. One teacher told CityNews that the school has had a few fire drills in the past and students knew which exits to use.

A fire captain was treated for exhaustion but was able to return to work the same day.

“He was one of the first guys in there. So he encountered the most of the heat, most of the work and most of the stress. Because of that he suffered a little bit from that,” Toronto Fire platoon chief Norm Clements told CityNews.

The school was quickly evacuated as a precaution and classes were cancelled for the rest of the day, TDSB spokeswoman Zoya McGroarty told CityNews.

The blaze began around 10:30 a.m. in the drama room, Clements said. The room had no windows, which made ventilation difficult.

“By the time our guys got in here, it was a very serious fire,” Clements said.

The drama room has a storage room, which was where the fire started, “and then everybody started to scream and stuff and then we just all went out,” said one student who was there.

The “stubborn, intense” fire produced a lot of heavy smoke and there was zero visibility. Initially, crews believed the fire had started in a bathroom.

By 11 a.m., firefighters had brought in a 65-millimetre hose, which is used to douse large fires.

By 12:30 p.m. the fire was knocked down and a secondary search of the school had been completed. Firefighters then began ventilating the building.

The Ontario Fire Marshal’s office is investigating.

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