Terry Dun, public information officer for the northwestern Massachusetts Incident Management Team, said the tiny school that serves approximately 80 students in this rural town was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived on the scene short after 4 p.m.
ROWE - A lightning strike Saturday afternoon caused a fire that destroyed the Rowe Elementary School. The Greenfield ladder truck works on some hot spots as the fire is brought under control and the sun starts to set behind the clouds and smoke.
ROWE – The Rowe Elementary School on Pond Road was leveled by a fast-moving fire on Saturday emergency officials believe was ignited by a lightning strike during a sudden storm in the area in the late afternoon.
Terry Dun, public information officer for the northwestern Massachusetts Incident Management Team, said the tiny school that serves approximately 80 students in this rural Franklin County town was fully engulfed in flames when firefighters arrived on the scene shortly after 4 p.m.
“It quickly went from a first alarm to a third alarm to a fifth alarm ... That’s major,” Dun said, adding that firefighters were prevented from entering the school by the wall of flames and were forced to fight the blaze from outside.
No one was inside the school at the time of the fire; two firefighter suffered minor injuries – one from exhaustion and one from a fall. Both were treated and released at a local hospital.
The school is across from a town park but at least a half-mile away from any homes or other buildings.
Dun said school principal Bill Knittle was on the scene, but there was no discussion yet about where students will attend school this fall.
“This is a devastating blow to a small community. Most of the students’ parents went there too. Everyone’s still trying to process it. People are still kind of in shock,” Dun said.
Knittle could not immediately be reached for comment.
Dun said firefighters from 25 to 30 communities from as far away as Greenfield and spots in southern Vermont responded to the fire – with about 125 firefighters battling the blaze at its peak.
The building is a one-story combination brick and wooden structure, and the school’s Web site says about a third of the school’s students come from neighboring towns.
Dun said the building’s double roof had collapsed early on. He said a lightning analysis would be conducted but it was considered the genesis of the fire for all practical purposes.
The storm burst over the small town and neighboring Charlemont, with soaking rains, hail, thunder and lightning for more than two hours, weather officials said.
CBS3 Springfield meteorologist Mike Skurko said the storm posed not only the risk of lightning strikes but flash flooding, although a trooper at the Massachusetts State Police Shelburne barracks said none had been reported by late evening.
“In the case of today, there was no front or larger storm system to sort of watch as it moves across the country. The only indication we had was that it was hot and humid,” Skurko said, adding that the intense storm hovered over the Charlemont area for a prolonged period of time and fizzled out around 5:30 p.m.
Skurko said the National Weather Service estimated three to four inches of rain had fallen over Charlemont by 4:30 p.m.
Kayakers on the Deerfield River reported having to hustle off the river in a hurry as the skies opened up and the river swelled.
Sonja Brown, of Greenfield, who attempted to go tubing with a friend and their children on the Deerfield Saturday afternoon, said the weather got tricky just as they were trying to put their tubes off Zoar Road in Rowe.
“It started raining really hard and we tried to wait it out, hoping for it to pass. But then there was thunder and lightning and hail,” Brown said, adding that the river was running fast but did not appear to be overflowing. “We’ll try again tomorrow; when we got back to Greenfield around 4 o’clock, the sun was shining.”
Skurko said another storm front will loom and likely hit the area Sunday evening.
“Tomorrow night we’re going to get one of those good (storm) lines that we can watch moving through Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. The only question is whether it will stay together once it gets here,” he said.
That storm could linger into Monday morning’s commute but will lose its steam by later that day. The muggy weather that has dogged the region is expected to lift by Tuesday.